i turned around, my life was changing
by moeten
Summary: She should be happy, excited. She was told she could never have children; this should be their miracle child, the universe smiling down on them. They should be celebrating.
1. Choking Hazards

_important general disclaimer: hi! this is not necessarily a 'b x r have a cute baby' story; i'm not going to cover a year and a pregnancy and a birth and all that. this is much more the story of them deciding whether or not they want to have a baby at_ all _, with maybe a couple flashforwards to 2016 and the ramifications of their choices._

* * *

 **Upper East Side, Manhattan.**

 **Monday, August 17th, 2015.**

* * *

The sofa is new. They argued for weeks about the material, the colour; powerpoint presentations were involved. Barney stands up from it in one smooth motion when she opens the door, his hands running down the sides of his shirt to smooth any wrinkles borne of slouching as he crosses the living room. Robin sets her keys on the shelf and turns to him and his smile. His hands go up to her face, fingers sliding towards her ears; she curls her fingers around his wrists and tries to smile back.

"I got you a blue raspberry lollipop at the doctor's," she says, and he kisses her, and she kisses him back.

He draws away. "Are you going to start hurling again?" His expression amused. He removes his hands from her jaw; slides them into her coat pockets. Comes out with the lollipop and unwraps it deftly. There's a joke floating there, about his ability to quickly open wrappers; Robin watches him put the candy in his mouth, considers his teeth and tongue. He smirks, lifts his eyebrow. Takes the candy from his mouth. "'Cause if you do, we're pretty much done. Forever." He moves closer, his other hand pulling from her pocket, sliding under her coat, curling around her hip.

It was probably in their vows somewhere: a laundry list of acceptable bodily fluids, not extending to vomit on Dolce & Gabbana, and she knows he means it as a joke but she pulls away from his attempted kiss, the mood broken. "No," she says. "I mean, no, I'm not going to hurl." It feels a bit like lying. She definitely is nauseous, but she thinks this may be borne of something different. She toes off her shoes; walks around him to collapse on the new sofa.

"Hey." Barney follows her. She draws her feet up and he sits down. "Are you okay? Want something to drink?"

His hand on her calf. "It's nothing," she says.

"Okay." He turns on the TV, settles back into the sofa. Keeps glancing back at her. Turns the remote over and over in his hands.

She thinks about their new sofa, about the way he likes to keep things clean and neat, starts giving her _looks_ when she leaves messes in corners, sinks. (And pointed comments soon after.) His clothes, always perfectly pressed and starched. The suitcases in their bedroom, still not entirely unpacked. "Okay, yeah," Robin says. "It's not nothing." She sits up. He turns the TV off. She looks at him, the stick of the lollipop still hanging out of the corner of his mouth. She thinks about the vomit clause of their marriage. Christ. She can't do this. "You know how I've been feeling weird since we got back from Nicaragua last week?"

Of course he does. She's been barfing and headachey for days, and annoyed at the unfairness the whole while: her groaning on the bathroom floor and Barney laughing about his superior, American, immune system; refusing to stand too close to her while she's heaving, pushing all the pillows on their bed at her, buying crates of oranges, and forcing her to drink unsweetened tea. Being the biggest pain in the ass while she's sick.

"Are you sick? Like, for real? What did the doctor say?" It's his expression that does it, open and concerned, ready to buy more fruit baskets. Not ready to risk sick on his clothes. Their quiet, clean apartment. His fingers tight around her ankle, reflexively clinging on.

"No. Well, yes. Kind of?" Robin hazards, covering all of her bases. Trying to guess all his reactions. She hasn't even tried yet to figure out hers. "I'm —" Beat. "Take the candy out of your mouth."

"What?" He rolls the stick from one corner of his mouth to the other, his eyes squinting in confusion. She gives him a look, and he obeys, removing the nub of the lollipop and setting it on the corner of a newspaper on the coffee table. "Okay, what's wrong with you?" he asks, frowning, with a decent stab at _light-hearted_. "'Cause I'm starting to freak out a little, and —"

She braces herself and says what she never ever thought she would. "I'm pregnant."

He stops talking. He doesn't move.

She doesn't breathe in after that exclamation, and her lungs, her throat, quickly begin to tighten, clamour for air. She doesn't dare move, doesn't dare _blink_ , just watches her husband take in the news. He stares at her, mouth still open from her interruption, his face — his body — perfectly still. Barney is never perfectly still. He's never _still_. Even sleeping he twitches around. (She's digressing. Her temples pound. She needs _air_.) Robin finally sucks in a breath and sees his shoulders rise as he breathes in, too.

Slowly, he turns himself away from her, shifting on the sofa so that he's facing the television again, as if the black screen is more important than the fact that she is — that they are — that this is a genuine _situation_ , and her heart is going at eighty miles a minute. She takes another deep breath, and then a third. "Seriously, Barney?" she says, angrily, but at least she doesn't scream.

"Give me a minute!" he says, his voice high and tight, his fingers fluttering, clenching and unclenching on his thighs. Last time, he'd been happy, she thinks, and then tries her very best to never, ever think of that again. Too late. Last time, he'd been excited, and they hadn't even been _together_ , and what's changed between now and then? Four years and a marriage? She's too old now? She doesn't want this kid either, but he could at least be happy, at least be excited, at least be one check in the _pros_ column, at least make her feel like she wasn't miserable _and_ alone.

"Yeah?" she says acidly, wanting to throw up for reasons much more based in anxiety and terror than tropical diseases-cum-morning sickness. "Sure, how much time do you need? Five months? Six? Because we don't have much longer than that, and," she stops herself. He's put his head in his hands, grinding his palms against his eyes. She swallows. Closes her eyes. Takes three more breaths. "Because this? This was never supposed to happen." Not like this. Not ever. There were _options_ , she knew that, but accidents were supposed to be one hundred percent off the table. "I don't know how it _did_ happen."

Barney straightens back up, takes a deep breath. Looks about how she feels — nauseous; frightened — but with something else around the corners. He licks his lips. Clears his throat. She watches his expression change. "Well — _Robin_ — when a man and a woman love one another very much, or, alternatively, if the man is an irresistible god among men who women can't help but drop trou for due to sheer sex appeal —"

"—A god among men who didn't use a condom." She knows he's just joking to try and lighten the mood, but she can't. Not right now.

He glances at her sidelong, half smiling. "Let's be honest here, with the number of condoms we go through and the economy in the state it is in, 'free love' was totally a wise financial decision for the Scherbatsky-Stinsons."

"Kids aren't exactly cheap either," she says cooly.

His face falls. He nods, then shakes his head. "Are… " He hesitates. Using his real voice again, allowing the worry to show through once more. "Are you going to… go through with this?"

"It's not _me_ ," she says harshly. "It's _us_. Are _we_ going to have a _kid_?"

"Are we?" he asks softly. Robin can only stare at him. _Are we_? Why can't he just say what he thinks about it? Show an opinion? Do something besides get all stoic and crack jokes and look to _her_? She doesn't know! She didn't think this would ever, ever be a situation she'd be in again, and she still doesn't know if she wants kids. She knows he doesn't — but does he? He did _once_ , or said he did, and she doesn't know what she'd do if the answer is yes. Why can't he just _tell_ her?

"Robin," he says, dead serious now. She holds her breath again. "I want whatever you want," he continues. "I mean it," he adds, narrowing his eyes when she starts to protest. "If you want to have this kid, then I'm with you, one hundred percent. And if you _don't_ ," he hesitates very slightly, just long enough for Robin to wonder _then what_ , wonder if he led with the option he prefers, the panic coming back in a heartbeat, "then same deal. Whatever you want to do, I'm with you."

"You can't just put it on me!" she says, and her voice is shaky and she wipes at her eyes in a furtive motion. "Barney, I'm scared to _death,_ and maybe you think this is supportive, but I can't make this decision on my own!" She means to leave it at that, swinging her legs down to the floor, thinking she needs to move, get some water, throw up, _something_ , but the words burst out of her like, well, vomit. "What if I make the wrong one, huh? What if I pick one and- and you say _oh, I'm with you_ , and then this time next year you're resenting me for - for taking away your one chance at having a kid, or for _having_ a kid who pukes all over your suits? What if _I'm_ the one who…" Who resents the kid, who resents him, who lives with regret the rest of her life. She's only just figured out how to be a _wife_. How can she possibly —

All at once, he moves to her, sliding over the sofa cushions and taking her into his arms, half pulling her onto his lap. She leans into him, wrapping her arms him in turn, wanting this, something warm and solid and familiar. The smell of his ridiculous, expensive soap and the clean scent of his clothing, the feel of his hair against her cheek, his chin on her shoulder. Good things. Things she loves. She rests her head against the crook of his neck, feels his fingers in her hair. "I'm fucking terrified," she says after her heart stops racing, after she can breathe again. "I don't know what to do."

"Me neither," he says, threading his fingers through her hair. "Me too."

They're silent for a long time. She can feel his heart pounding, hear him breathe in and out. His breaths are calm, robotic. His heart is at a million beats a minute.

"How far — how much time do we have?" he asks finally.

Until what, she wonders. Birth, or the point where birth becomes the only option? Her entire body seems to clench in cold fear. His hand rubs circles on her back. "I'm ten weeks."

"Okay."

They fall silent again.

It's not supposed to be like this, she thinks. She should have opened the door and announced it proudly; he should have swept her in his arms and kissed the hell out of her. They should have been calling everyone else with the news, opening bottles of champagne and lighting cigars — well, maybe not the latter two. And come to think of it, how much _has_ she drank over the last ten weeks? Not as much as back when they were all in the bar every night, but god, she's already a terrible parent. Terrified, on the verge of a panic attack, and more alcohol in her system than can possibly be okay. She should be happy, excited. She was told she could never have children; this should be their miracle child, the universe smiling down on them. They should be celebrating.

"It'd be a high risk pregnancy," she says.

"Bed rest?" he hazards.

"We have money," she says. "We can afford it." She'd have to quit, or at least go on leave from, her job. She tries to imagine staying in bed, on the sofa, for six months, and reflexively wants to take off running. She'd need to get _hobbies_. Take up crafting or something. Decoupage. Imagines herself learning to cook, her body huge and heavy, greeting Barney at the door in the evening in a dress and apron. Giving him a cocktail. He holding a briefcase, swatting at her ass. Her giggling behind her hand. A laugh track playing. Everything in black and white.

After another long silence, he pulls away from her and just looks at her. She smiles queasily back.

"Okay," he says, and reaches out, brushes his hand along her cheekbone and kisses her softly. He still tastes like artificial blue raspberry. He draws back again, squares his shoulders. "Okay, here's the play. We have the kid." Her heart catches. He spreads his hands out before them, painting the scene. "We leave our jobs. You go on bedrest, except, _we_ take off. Five weeks in Bejing. Next five, Spain. Four star hotels all the way. First class plane tickets. Ooh, we can get a _boat_. I bet the Captain has a couple spare boats! Weeks ten through fifteen, we go live in Amsterdam! And then after thirty odd weeks of travelling and staying all bed in day — not just because you're knocked up, _what_ up, you pop out a baby with your eyes and my bone structure…" He pauses dramatically; she doesn't dare move or blink; "…And then we give him to Ted."

She laughs; a sharp, unexpected sound, and he's grinning at her. She punches his arm, then kisses him again, because she'd needed that laugh, needed the break in the tension. "We can't give him to Ted."

" _Please_ , we can totally give him to Ted. Ted would _cry_."

"He'd totally cry. One kid's not enough for him, you _know_ he and Tracy are going to want another."

"Greedy bastards," Barney sighs, shaking his head.

Robin thinks: _one would be enough for us._ Robin chuckles. Robin's not sure what she's thinking anymore. She reaches for and takes Barney's hand. Strokes her thumb over his. "Can we… take a couple of days?" she asks. Ten weeks. They have a couple of days. "Bust out the yellow legal pads and pro-and-con up this bitch?"

"Totally. Awesome," he says.

"You know it," she says lightly, the fear, for now, buried a few centimetres below the surface.

She watches him run his hands over his face, take a deep breath, a sigh of relief and draining tension. She tries not to read too much into it. "Okay," he says. "Okay. I _really_ need a cigarette." and he's been good so far, no panic attacks or fat jokes, so Robin doesn't remind him that he's supposed to be quitting, has been 'quitting' for about a year and a half. She remembers his heart racing. He's been very good.

She thinks: _if we're keeping this kid, he's going to need to quit for real_. If. _If_. Pros and Cons. Bedrest, setting her career back, a child she's not sure she wants, knows how to want, that will change their apartment and their lives. A sudden lack of alcohol. Her husband's lingering smoking habit; his expensive clothes. _High risk pregnancy_ , and all the potential for heartbreak that entails. Barney stands up from the couch, heads for the balcony. _Pros_ , she thinks, and thinks of the play. She believes him that he'll be happy either way. She wonders if one will make him happier, and if she's the kind of person who could make that kind of choice.

"Hey, Barney?" she calls before he reaches the doors, curling herself up on the sofa and thinking: _good thing we sprung for the comfortable one_. Pros and cons. She feels another powerpoint presentation coming on, and stares listlessly at the black TV.

"Yeah?"

"Five weeks in Beijing, ten weeks in Spain and Amsterdam… where do we go for the last trimester?"

"Uh," he opens the door, and the faint noises of the city spill into the apartment. She hears the click of his lighter, smells a faint whiff of tobacco. "I don't know." He snaps his fingers. "How do you feel about Quebec?"


	2. The Rabbit Test

_this chapter got mad long, my guess being because barney pov = thought A.D.D and 80 million tangents and UNEXPECTED CONFLICT and bunnies, sorry-not-sorry. next chapter has ted._

* * *

 **Upper East Side, Manhattan.**

 **Monday, August 17th.**

* * *

Barney was a grown-ass adult, with the papers to prove it. He owned a home with furniture and paid taxes; knew how to tip and was friendly with his doorman; was good with kids and animals; was a good dresser (scratch that: _great_ dresser) with great taste. He could tie a tie without a mirror (duh), please a woman (what up), and, if in the service of a bet or if a blizzard rendered Seamless out of commission, cook. He has several bank accounts, stocks, and _assets_. Knows how to drive a car. Holds his liquor. After two years, he's even starting to feel like he has this _awesome husband_ thing down. Like, dude, he took his wife's last name in _addition_ to his own, _despite_ how clearly impossible it was to spell. He doesn't see Ted or Marshall or Lily doing that. Clear winner up in here, please hold back your cheers fooo _oor_ … _Barney Scherbatsky-Stinson_!

Yeah, he's pretty great.

He's also freaking the hell out.

He takes a final drag of his cigarette, feeling the warmth fill his lungs, and tosses the butt over the side of the balcony. The humid city wind teases at his face and hair, and when he exhales, the smoke is pulled away and vanishes. He finds himself lighting a second cigarette; isn't really conscious of it until he takes the first drag. He's quitting. Really. He knows Robin's going to give him a hard time about it later.

Robin.

Fuck.

He looks out over the Upper East Side, scans the windows of the apartment across the street for anything interesting-slash-naked people, smokes his next cigarette, and tries very hard not to think about babies. Which means it is all he fucking can: Robin is _pregnant_. Holy _crap_. And yeah, he deserves the _highest_ of fives for being so damn good that he managed to knock up an infertile woman, but there's still the small fact that she's pregnant and scared to death and he abandoned her for the balcony and what is quickly becoming a third smoke. (At one point is it chain smoking? Probably _this_ point, right?) He wants to take out his phone and call someone, a lifeline, for advice. James? No, James has never once had a pregnancy scare. Ted! Perfect Ted! Ted accidentally knocked up _his_ woman, too, except Ted would just want to talk baby names and plan the kid's first eight birthdays, and Barney is trying his _absolute hardest_ to not want this kid.

And there it is.

His stomach drops to his knees, and he leans heavily against the balcony railing, facing the window. He looks at the living room. Robin's turned on the TV. He can only see the back of the top of her head, knows she's probably curled up, jagged, arm around her knees. _She's_ the one he wants to call up, talk to, just like in the old days: _some chick just told me I got her pregnant_ , _fuck_ , _Scherbatsky_ : _what do I do_ , except she was almost crying and all he could do was give her a hug and run away at the first chance. He's pathetic. Maybe he has to take _good husband_ off his list of accomplishments. But as soon as she'd said it, he'd thought _yes_ , and it was all he could do to keep from telling her so. This is great, this is a sign from the universe — this will be so much _fun_ , I _want_ this, but he knows Robin, he _does_ , and he knows she does not and never will. It had taken all he had to not react, to not make a Ted Mosby Announcement Video, to be supportive and support her and support her wants and not force his, and then to _run the fuck away_ as soon as she was breathing right. Like an asshole. He puts cigarette number four to his lips but doesn't light it; rolls it around.

 _I could talk her into it_. He hates himself again, for even thinking it. Maybe she's right, anyway. They'd have to hire a nanny, and a wet-nurse, and Robin's body would get all… weird; puffy… and she wouldn't want a baby. And what if he's a crappy father? He doesn't exactly know how to… _hah_ , there's some thoughts he's not going to think. Awesome! (And so, of course, it's off to the races: what if it destroys their marriage? They get along so _well_ , thinks are as good as they can be, what if this is too much? What if she resents him, them, what if she turns to him and says _you took everything away from me_ , and she leaves him, and he's alone? One too many things to ask for. What if this life is fragile, what if he's just not _meant_ to sustain and have and keep this kind of happiness, what if somehow _he_ fucks things up and _she_ hates him forever and ever and all their friends pick sides _and_.)

Awesome!

He spits out the cigarette and looks at it, turns it around in his hand, palms it and makes it vanish, pulls it out of his other sleeve, ta _-dah_. He tosses it, unsmoked, over the side of the building. No. He can't ruin this. He's going to be supportive and do whatever Robin wants to do and say that that pregnancy trip around the world was a joke, for good measure. He doesn't want this kid, not unless Robin does. They're not even going to _think_ about taking off and giving birth to a kid in Canada. His stomach crawls at the very idea. He'd really been hallucinating hard for a minute there. Probably from the panic. Yeah. They'll just get a dog. One of those big ones with floppy ears. Ooh, and they can get some bunnies!

"I miss Fluffernutter," Barney announces, the tail end of that train of thought, as he re-enters the apartment, cool and quiet and clean. Shuts the door behind him, the August heat. Shuts the door on his feelings, too. Feelings outside, awesomeness inside. Just like that. (Okay, _not_ just like that. But he'll get there, they'll get there. Keep it light, keep it fun, she'll follow his lead, he knows it.)

"You have a weird thing for rabbits," Robin replies. He watches her untangle herself from herself, sit upright. She's watching CNN on mute. He runs his hand over the back of the sofa. He wants to hug her again, but over the past hour they've pretty much reached their cuddling quota for the week. He sits down at the opposite end of the couch instead.

"They are _adorable_ , and they love me unconditionally," he sniffs. Eyes his previously abandoned lollipop. Doesn't think about how his wife is pregnant. "Much as you love Anderson Cooper. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but he's gay."

"Shut up. I don't want to co-host with Anderson Cooper," Robin says, meaning that she totally, totally does. "I'm just watching to scope out the competition. Not _competition_. I'm watching to, dude," the screen changes, "I am totally better _and_ hotter than…" she pauses to read the name of the new newscaster, "Lynda Kinkade. Who spells Linda with a _y_? Just look at her, with her stupid… reports. On CNN."

"Oooh, I bet she's into all _kinds_ of nasty," Barney says appreciatively, kind of tuning her out a little bit. "Robin, her last name is _literally_ Kink-ade. I _bet_ she's a kink aid. You know what I bet she does," he reaches over, taps her shoulder excitedly, "I bet she–"

"I'm not going to be on CNN," Robin says, like it's something sinking in.

"Hey, now," he says, much preferring to focus on Lynda and not emotions churning two inches below the skin. "You can be anything you want to be. You're way hotter than her, and _way_ dirtier. Remember the other night?" _Oh_ , he just had a great, baby-free idea of how they could spend the rest of the evening-slash-blow off some steam. He looks over at her, hoping their telepathy is up and running, but Robin is still looking at the TV.

"No," she says. (Is that a _yes_ to the telepathy?) "I mean, this is going to mess with everything." Robin leans forward, towards the TV, her forearms on her knees. He can make out the line of her stomach in the shadow, still flat. Her boobs still normal sized. _This is_ , he thinks. Is she — are they — going to keep it? "That fantasy of yours, where we travel the world…" He imagines it again, big windows with those floaty curtains and sticky heat, and thinks: _fantasy_ , and thinks: _right_. She continues: "We can't do that! We can't even pull a Marshall and Lily and take off to _one_ place. Take a year off to have a baby? More like torpedo my career. Kaput. Done. CNN? Forget it, I won't even keep _my_ desk. I'll have to start as a correspondent again. Go back to research. And we'd have a _kid_ at home, who I'd have to take care of…"

"I'd take care of him too," Barney says, a little stung. "I'd help."

"Yeah, about that," Robin says bitterly. "Why did we give Fluffernutter away, again? We couldn't even handle a _rabbit_."

He shrugs and thinks of Fluffernutter's soft, floppy ears. Because they had been planning a wedding, because they had been busy working, because Robin was always busy working, because he'd just heard from his handlers at the bureau that the raid would be going down within six months. Because they were always planning _something_ , the two of them, taking off on mini-vacations and visiting their friends and maybe, okay, maybe they _couldn't_ handle a bunny, let alone a human child. But he thinks about a well-dressed little boy and hanging up adorable artwork and him playing with his cousins and something existing, tying him and Robin together _forever_ like that… (He can't say these things, he can't _think_ these things. What if he pressures her, and she hates him, and leaves him? What if she did that, but they also had a kid?)

(But if they had a kid — she could never leave him, not really, no matter how much he might fuck up and make her go, because he'd still see their child, he wouldn't leave his kid's life, he'd still see her, he'd still _talk_ to her, even if she… she married someone else, some asshole, they'd still have their son, he'd still have something, and he hates himself, he fucking _hates_ himself, for even thinking that, for imagining it, for _wanting_ that, as a back up, as a contingency, as proof of how _shitty_ he is as a human being, for still thinking this at all.)

— He takes a shaky breath. His face feels hot, his heart feels heavy.

"Oh, shit," Robin says, concerned. She scoots close to him, rubs his shoulder. "Hey, I'm sorry. That was mean. I know you loved that stupid bunny."

"I was going to pull him out of things for Marv's birthday!" Barney sniffs, because, okay, he really does miss Fluffernutter and his soft bunny ears. And more than that, he wants to go the rest of his life without Robin even getting an _inkling_ of what an asshole he really is.

She pats his arm sympathetically. "I know you were."

They fall silent again, Barney concentrating on his breathing, slowing down his heart, banishing his bad thoughts into the darkest corner of his brain. He watches CNN on mute, half reads the closed captioning. One report ends, another begins. He tries not to think about how Robin is pregnant for about the eighty-third time in the past hour. Whoops, too late. "I could take care of a kid, too," he says again, quietly.

Robin stays silent.

He continues after a minute. "I'm going to have to do a lot of testifying when AtruCell goes to trial, and there's court prep before that, and meetings with the feds, and I can do that by phone. The trial won't be sooner than next year. I'm basically unemployed right now," he continues carefully. "Except for my blog, which I can work on at home." Or in a boat in Amsterdam, a hotel in Barcelona, a high rise in Beijing. Anywhere with wi-fi. Anywhere Robin wants. A cabin in Quebec City, which he imagines as a collection of shacks in the woods. Ugh. Even that.

She makes a noise, half laugh, half sigh: a nervous release of tension. "You're saying you'd be a stay-at-home dad?"

"I don't know," he admits. He imagines adorable little shoes and suits and taking his son to the park, to the penguin house in Central Park Zoo, with a sort of clenching of his heart. If he's honest, no corporation in America is going to hire an executive now famous for being an FBI mole: he-slash-his epic takedown of Greg was on the front page of the New York Times and everything. (He has it framed in their bedroom.) Maybe once they've gone to trial… Agent Ross has said some things about getting him a government job, but…

Robin is looking at him strangely. She leans back into the sofa. "You want this kid, don't you?"

His heart stops. Again. The air wooshes out of his lungs, and he's going to need to go to a doctor after today, all the arrhythmias must be causing permanent damage. "What? No! No, no, no way. Nope," he says frantically, lunging at the coffee table and peeling his abandoned lollipop off the Wall Street Journal. Twirls it around once in his hand, sticks it in his mouth. It tastes like ink and paper and sugary raspberry. "No way," he says, sucking on it hard, wishing it was a cigarette, risking it and looking back at his wife. Robin's expression has frozen, her eyes scared, her lips parted. His stomach feels greasy and his fingers numb. "No, I mean, yes, I do?" he guesses, trying to figure out the correct answer, the answer _she_ wants. Her eyebrows knit together. Shit, it was the other one. "Nooo, no kid. Definitely not. Which one are you looking for?" he asks desperately. Hopes it doesn't sound 'desperately.'

 _I can see this going either way_. Hadn't he used that line once? He sucks on his candy miserably.

"No," Robin says slowly, looking like she's barely breathing. "No, you do. You lead with the truth," she says, frowning, her gaze burning holes in his skin. "You always lead with the thing you want, and then you take it back or make it a joke or do something stupid, but you _always_ lead with the truth. You want this kid. You want me to have this kid."

"I —" His brain is blank, empty, and he grasps for something; _anything_. "I have a _tell?_ "

"Barney!" she snaps.

"I don't want kids!" he says desperately, no hiding the emotion this time. He spits out his candy, holds the stick in his hands. Stands up from the sofa to go throw it away, to _move_ , to move in a productive direction instead of running out of the apartment in a panic. He goes to the trash and drops it in. He looks back at Robin, still sitting on the sofa. She looks lost. He knows the feeling.

But Robin is nothing if not better put together than he'll ever be, so she rallies, sitting up, her hand clenching the arm rest. "Really? Because you're talking about being a _stay-at-home parent_ , and, a little while ago, you even joked about moving to _Canada_." She takes a deep breath; he can see her shoulders lift. "I'm not mad, I'm not, and there's no way in hell we're making this decision today, but we can't do this, we can't do _any_ of this, if you're not honest with me, Barney!"

He looks everywhere at once but at her. It's ridiculous, but the distance makes him feel safer. The counter, the arm of the chair, blocking him from her. Their own islands. Room to breathe. Room to speak. "I wasn't lying to you," he says forcefully, setting his hands on the counter, pressing down with all his weight. "I _wasn't lying_."

"I know you weren't," she says quickly, almost interrupting in her haste to reassure him, and a little of his fear dissipates.

He doesn't come out from behind the counter, not yet. "I wasn't lying. I want what you want. I don't need kids to be happy." Does he want kids? No, not in general, but does he want _this_ kid, this possibility that's just opened up before them, landed on their door? That's a little different, he knows, and he hopes not being specific doesn't count as dishonesty. Hopes. It all comes out in a guilty rush. "I just need you. And I need _you_ to be happy, and if having a kid will make you happy, then I want a kid. But if you don't, I don't, because I want you to be happy more than I want any of that, because I love you."

He watches her fingers clench at the arm of the sofa, her eyes blink rapidly. "I know," Robin says. "I get it." Her fingers flutter. "I do. But Barney—" she stands up from the couch, untangling her feet, clumsy, "I _can't_. I can't do this."

"I know," he says, coming around from the counter, meeting her halfway, trying not to feel disappointed or sad. He knew this would be her choice.

"That's not what I meant," she says tensely, rubbing her forehead. "Okay, that _might_ be what I meant, I don't know, but that's not what I'm talking about right now." She puts up her hand when he tries to move closer to her, and he shifts his weight to his heels and tries to wait. "You're just putting it all on me again, making this all up to me, like you being _happy_ is up to me, and I have to make the right decision without knowing what it is, and I _don't_ know. I might never know! Don't tell me you'll be happy no matter what —"

"I _will_ , I will be happy no matter what," he can't help but interrupt, and he takes a step away, hands raised in surrender, before she even finishes glaring at him.

"— _Because_ ," she continues angrily, her face pale, "you matter too! You're important to this! Even if you're happy _either way_ , I need to know what you _want_ , because that's a factor here!" These are very nice things to say, but she looks really, really furious. He's not sure how to react yet. "You're important to me, and so - so is your happiness, and I want to make you happy, but I barely know how to do that on a normal day! I can't be responsible for the, the happiness of _two_ people. I can't be the only one responsible for this! And I need you to stop trying to support me from ten feet behind me and stop agreeing with whatever you think I want you to say and go all fucking _in_ on this! Because I need you too, okay?"

He thinks that this is definitely the wrong time to be totally goddamn overcome with how much he loves Robin Scherbatsky (Scherbatsky- _Stinson_ ), but he is. She's scary when she's mad and they may or may not be having a baby, but he loves her, scary yelling and flaring nostrils and all. He manages a kind of nod. "Okay, yeah," he says weakly, thinking: _she needs me!_ like a middle schooler. Yeah. Hell yeah. All in. He's about to add: _yes, I want this kid,_ and yes, they have the money, and he has the time, and she should take over Anderson Cooper's job entirely if that's what she wants, he knows a guy, and —

"And, I'm going to throw up," Robin announces, suddenly peeling off towards the bathroom and stomping on the moment as she goes.

Barney decides now would be an excellent time for him to be a supportive, loving husband and get them some drinks and not go near barf. He gets glasses from the cupboard and sets them on the counter, removes the ice tray from the freezer, and realises he's stalling. _I need you too_ , he remembers, and goes to the bathroom after Robin.

She's on her knees in front of the toilet, resting her weight on her heels, one hand holding back her hair. He's careful not to look into the basin, and leans in the space next to the sink. "Well, it's progress," Robin says dryly, taking a couple of deep breaths and reaching up to flush the toilet.

"I just. I don't like…" he winces, delicately adjusts his shirtcuffs. "It's _gross_."

"You know that babies spew all _sorts_ of nasty crap?" She stands up, rests her hand on the toilet tank, rubs her stomach. Goes to the sink and her toothbrush. Her tone is a little bitter, but he thinks he probably has it coming after the last few minutes.

"Maybe I have to work on a couple of things," he admits, watching her clean her mouth.

"Maybe," she says, spitting into the sink. She goes for the mouthwash next.

"Are we … doing this?" he asks, knowing she can't respond while gargling. "Going all in?" She looks at him out of the corner of her eyes, and he isn't sure what it means. The bathroom feels like the wrong place to continue all their declarations, but he goes for it: "Because I want to. I think I want to. Because we have this chance in front of us, and I think we'd be awesome at it."

She spits into the sink again and lowers the toilet lid to sit on it. "Barney…"

"You can't ask me what I want and then shoot it down like, half a second later," he says quickly, raising his eyebrows.

"I know," she says. "And I'm not. I just think you don't really get how much this would _suck_. I'd be on bedrest, we'd be together _constantly_ , no room to breathe, I'd be useless and fat, and you _hate_ pregnant women, and even if I'm somehow the exception, _I_ have heard way too much from Lily and Tracy and trust me, you don't want to know some of the weird shit that goes on with the female body and childbirth. Plus all the risks of miscarriage and birth complications and _not fun_ , and then for the first few months no sleep, no sex, and a crying poop machine, and no matter how careful you are, I can promise you right now, you _will_ ruin at least a couple of suits. You're just thinking of the cute drawings and songs and our nephews and nieces, who we _give back_ after like two hours."

"But after that, we — or Ted —" he adds, because the joke worked earlier. She gives him half a smile for effort. "— have a little _person_ , who is adorable and well-dressed and has the best genes and most awesome parents in New York; no, the world. _Including_ Canada." Another weak smile. "We have the money. We can hire a nanny for every day of the week if we have to. _Means_ isn't even a thing here. It's only about what we _want_." She remains seated on the toilet, looking down at her hands. He kneels down on the bathroom tile before her, so they're closer in height, so he's not standing over her from afar.

She gestures for him, and he shuffles closer, lays his head on her lap. (Top Five Places he likes to put his face: number three, two being _her_ face and number one being six inches higher than he is right now, _what's up_.) "Also? I'll love you even if you get fat and disgusting, especially your boobs," he promises. She smells really good. "I'll even learn to accept barf. I'll wear a tee-shirt if I have to." She snorts in what is probably justified disbelief that he'd ever deign to wear tee-shirts. "Okay, yeah, the first year will suck," he admits, "but maybe after that it'd be awesome and worth it and we'd have the cutest kid on the planet. I know we could _kill_ this." Beat. "Maybe not, you know, _kill_. We could _rock_ this."

"We're a great uncle and aunt," she says, running her hands through his hair, "but parents?"

"Maybe this is one of Ted's signs from the universe. I knocked you up and you're not even supposed to _get_ pregnant. This is like, _Jesus_ levels of awesome."

"So you're saying this kid is like Jesus?" Robin says, amused and disapproving at once.

"Naah. I'm saying we're so great in the sack that we destroyed _female infertility,_ " he retorts, holding up his hand.

She slaps it. "Hey-o."

There's been a lot of cuddling today, he thinks idly, in the silence that follows. They're going to have to do something really raunchy later on to make up for it. Robin continues stroking his hair while he brainstorms, and she's eventually the one to break the silence again. "But what if," she says, "we only want this kid _because_ it's a scientific impossibility?"

His heart does that funny thing where it stops beating; another thing happening a lot today. "We want the kid?" She wants the kid?

"I don't know," she says. "Maybe? We're still not deciding today." He nods. "But what if we're just _thinking_ about it because this is our only shot? Like flying a helicopter, or licking national monuments, or saying dirty stuff on air, or eating a brick of wasabi? I mean, let's face it, we're _both_ really susceptible to…"

"Accepting challenges?"

"…Doing crazy things because we have the chance. This is a _kid_ , not a dare."

"Maybe." He has to admit that she has a point. A big point. He nuzzles his face into her thigh, takes a deep breath. The smell of her skirt, their laundry soap, _her_ below that, soft and warm and _his_. Maybe it is true. Adoption was probably always a possibility, but he'd never really thought about it. In vitro, same thing. Does that make this weird, just another crazy opportunity he — they? — feel a compulsion to grab because it's in front of them? Would he want this kid if they were just talking about treatments? He honestly doesn't know. (Would _she_ have gone for them? Would he have brought them up if she didn't? Would it matter to him if it wasn't almost in his grasp?)

He lifts his head out of her lap, looks up at her. She looks sad, exhausted, but the panic is gone from the corners of her eyes. He thinks he'd like to kiss her, but she's just been vomiting, even if she brushed her teeth after. But she needs him, too. He sits up and kisses her, a real kiss, his hand curling around her jaw, thumb along her cheekbone, her skin soft, her breath minty, her lips and teeth and tongue, his other hand trailing over her body, pressing gently at her breast, her hands sliding around his neck, his knee resting on the toilet lid between her thighs; he slides closer, she tilts her head up, he pulls her and himself up, standing, presses them together — and for the next few minutes, not a thought goes through his head but these, her fingernails scratching gently at his neck, his hands pulling her waist flush with his, nudging their hips together, their stomachs flush…

All he's really thinking is _here, or to the bedroom_? He pulls away just enough to run his hands over her waist, dipping his fingers under her skirt with the intent of pulling off her shirt — his fingers slide over her stomach. They both have the same thought at the same moment. Her fingers dig into his shoulders. It doesn't surprise him in particular that they got so caught up in making out they forgot about the situation — story of their life, _come on_ — but now that they're both thinking about babies, it's weird. It's super weird.

"Uh," says Robin. "Hey, we can totally still…" He hesitates, lifts his hands out of her skirt. Slides one hand under her shirt and presses it carefully, gently, against the flat of her stomach. Feels her take in a shaky breath; doesn't feel her exhale. Her belly feels the way it always has (warm, flat, skin soft and smooth, he dips his thumb into her belly button; she shivers). It hasn't even been a full day since the last time he touched her, so is he imagining an extra firmness? A roundness that's to (maybe) come? How soon can you tell these things? They look down at her stomach, his hand, foreheads almost touching. "Yeah," she says uncomfortably.

"We should talk to the others," Barney says suddenly, sliding his fingers down and away.

"What? No! No, no way." She steps back, almost falls over the toilet. "Absolutely not. We're not telling anyone until we know what we're doing, and, uh, depending, maybe they don't even have to know? They're going to get so weird. All of them."

"Yeah, but they're our friends," he frowns, "and they kinda have their lives together, right? Even Ted. Maybe they have some advice or something."

"They're all _parents_ ," says Robin. "If they find out I'm pregnant, all they'll care about is that I have the baby. All of them have wanted kids for years and _have_ kids. Ted always thought I was insane for _not_ wanting kids, and if I say I'm pregnant it'll just be _motherhood is the best thing in the world, Robin_ and _I knew you'd give in eventually, Robin_! And what if I don't? What if I can't? I'll have to deal with them judging me for the rest of our lives!"

"Okay, calm down," he says, alarmed and concerned and putting his hands on her shoulders and ignoring the sinking feeling in his stomach and telling himself _you knew better than to get excited_. And she was so calm a second ago, and he just messed that up again. Shit. "If they get like that, we'll just move to — what's a good country? Chile? We'll move there, leave them behind. Losers. "

She leans against him, more a solid weight than an embrace. Three cuddles in one day, he thinks. Wow. He wraps his arms around her. "I can barely cope with figuring out you and me," she says. "Hell, I can barely cope with _me_. I just want to stop thinking about this mess for a while, not bring even more crap into it. Not our friends, not _this_. I have officially felt enough emotions today."

He thinks about messes. Barf and baby clothes and her, and him. Emotions. He gets it. He doesn't know what to think, either. What point to press. If he should really try to talk her into this. What she'll decide on her own. What he does know is this: he's confused, and Robin is upset, and he _really_ doesn't like that. "Well, luckily for you," he says, "you're married to me. Distraction is my middle name."

"Yeah?"

" _Shyeah_. Did you know that I am so good I can get infertile chicks pregnant?"

She laughs and looks up at him. "You're really kind of proud of yourself, aren't you?"

"You know it," he says, and kisses her once more.


	3. Ten Points

_i love ted, he's my favourite, plus he has excellent taste in birthdays and towns to be born in, but wow is he hard to_ write _. i should mention i've never written for this fandom before! it's an important disclaimer to make!_ _i'd love any feedback i can get on this, so if you have any thoughts, please let me know!_

 _the rest of this story has been plotted out: i'm looking at seven chapters total, plus an epilogue set in 2016. so we're almost halfway there! i have one more chapter fully written but after updates should slow down as the story gets near climax…_

 _next chapter is back on barney._

* * *

 **White Plains, New York**

 **Tuesday, August 18th.**

* * *

"Hey!" Ted says, kicking open the screen door with Penny in his arms. He shifts her, gives Robin a clumsy, one-armed hug. "How was Nicaragua?"

"It was great!" she says in a too-hearty, unconvincing sort of voice. "Wow, lots of sun, and nature, it was so great." She'd spent the last day throwing up with what they'd thought at the time was a tropical disease, but, you know. Funny story. "How are the 'burbs?"

"Awesome," says Ted, holding the door open so she can come in. The house looks more-or-less like an actual house for actual humans nowadays instead of a desperate panic buy, although Robin knows only the main rooms are completely finished. Still: as much as they'd always mocked Ted for buying it in the first place, it had taken him approximately two weeks to turn into the lame suburban dad he'd always secretly been. "Okay, tell me for real, how was your trip?"

"It was great. It is a beautiful, scenic country." Robin heads straight for the study and the Chesterfield. "We even left our suite, like, twice."

"Check in and check out?" Ted guesses, and she gives that the high five it deserves before sinking into the leather. Ted bounces Penny in his arms and goes to put her in a baby contraption of some sort — one of those plastic chairs with plastic dangling toys and mirrors. A walker? A six month old can't walk yet, right? A sitter? Her stomach flutters in what she hopes is nerves and not 'disappointed foetus.' "But seriously," Ted is saying, settling down in the armchair opposite the sofa. "Is everything okay?"

"Dude, that's like the third time you've asked me," Robin says, watching Penny reach for a fat sparkly purple butterfly.

"Well, you drove all the way out to Westchester, on a Tuesday," he raises his index finger, " _alone_."

"So, what?" she scoffs. "I can visit you alone." There's a makeshift bar in the corner, and she wants a drink desperately. If only to have something to do with her hands. She's pregnant, she reminds herself.

"You can, but would Barney let you?" Ted squints and leans forward. Robin is alarmed for a moment that this is going to get weird, but he does the scholarly finger thing again. "Fact: Penny is Barney's _favourite_ niece; nay, his favourite of either gender. Fact: As his best friend, he would want to hang with me. Fact: You two are _always_ together. And yet… _fact_ : you're here alone. Therefore, he doesn't know you're here, and something is going on."

"Wow, it's like you're a detective!" Her voice all high and girly. He snorts, she laughs. "Cool it, Mosby. I just came to hang out. Besides, _Sadie_ 's his favourite. Just admit you're lonely out in the country and miss your best bro."

"Well… you two should come visit more!" he says. "It's hard going down to the city and back with an six-month-old."

Yeah, but it's the suburbs. Robin lives in Manhattan for a reason. They have been getting out here more since Ted and Tracy settled in — and there's the monthly-ish visits with Jerry and family — but otherwise, why bother? "Hey, you know what you could do?" she suggests, leaning forward, shimmying her shoulders. "Come on down to hang out… and get _Carly_ to babysit."

Ted chokes and laughs. "Barney would have a heart attack." Beat. "So, you know, strong maybe."

Things naturally proceed from that point to general chatter and basic catching up. They talk work: Robin steering the conversation towards Columbia and Ted's other projects, not wanting to touch her somewhat up-in-the-air sick/maybe maternity leave. They talk the house. They talk about their spouses-slash-fiancées (Tracy's neck deep in her dissertation and hasn't seen the sun in weeks; they gossip about Barney's actually still kind of badass FBI connections); Ted refrains from looking at Robin's cell phone pictures of their trip (" _come on, we did do a_ little _sightseeing"_ ); Penny bats things around from her chair. She's missed this. Bantering with Ted, something comfortable and easy. It hasn't always been.

After a while, Ted offers to get them both a drink. "A drink, not a drink-drink," he clarifies. "As long as Tracy's breast feeding, we're pretty dry around here."

"That's cool," she says, glad to be saved the trouble of coming up with an excuse to do just that. She wonders if it's another point in the _bad future mother_ column that her immediate thought was _well, it's officially gonna be baby formula for us_. The points are really racking up. She watches Penny pensively until Ted returns, holding two whiskey glasses of ginger ale, big ice cubes, and what looks suspiciously like mint leaves. "God, no wonder you wanted Barney to come over and save you from your life. This is just depressing." Yep, mint leaves.

"I miss alcohol," he whimpers sadly.

She laughs and raises her glass in a toast. "To drinking!" _You have no idea how right you are, Teddy-boy._

They each take a sip or two of their fancy ginger ales, and Robin turns her cup around in her hands. The heavy glass is comforting in a strange way: solid. Real. "Actually, uh, there kind of is something I wanted to talk to you about," she says, and cuts him off at the pass: "If you say _I knew it_ , I'm walking right out this door."

Ted rolls his eyes, smiles at her. She can't help but smile back, but now that's she's said it, she feels much heavier. Anxious again. But it's Ted. But it's _Ted_. He's always been pro-Robin; he's always been safe and comfortable and on her side; it makes him the natural person to go to as a sounding board. He's less likely to pry and fix than Lily; he loves her and Barney both. By technicality, he's known them both the longest of the gang. He's the obvious choice. "So what is it?" Ted asks, when she's silent for a few seconds too long. "Robin, it's nothing _serious_ , right?"

"No," she says, lying blatantly. "I mean, yes. I mean, kind of?" She looks down at her whiskey glass and wishes it was whiskey. "We're thinking about adoption."

Ted's eyes go wide, and he sinks back in his chair, and this is exactly why Robin lied to him. Adoption is safe, it's impersonal, it absolutely doesn't imply she's already ten weeks pregnant, and he's _still_ reacting like he's too surprised to speak. Is it that obviously a bad idea? Are they that obviously not cut out to be parents? "Wow," he says at last. "Wow, really, are you sure?"

"Well, no," Robin says defensively. "It just came up. Casually. What if, you know?" And then, desperate and feeling stupid, she says something she almost immediately regrets: "It was Barney's idea!"

"Oh. Well, you know how he gets," Ted says in a reassuring sort of way. "Remember when he and I almost adopted a baby? He has a lot of crazy ideas, that's all." And just like that, it's a crazy idea. Just one of Barney's schemes. Nothing important.

"Right, it'd be crazy," she mutters. Of course she remembers when he and Ted borrowed Sadie. It wasn't exactly the greatest week of her life. Her stomach lurches, but she's relieved, too, and hates herself for it, because he's handled this so well and it's not his fault more than her own. She leans forward. " _Is_ it, though?"

" _Yeah_ ," says Ted. "Get him a dog or something."

"Come on," she says, frustrated. "He's not pressuring me into having a kid because he's _bored_." Even as she says it, she thinks, _shit_. Why does he want this kid, really? What if he _is_? Or what if this is what he's wanted all along? Or what if— she shakes her head. "He's not pressuring me at all, actually. We were just talking about it. Casually."

"Are you sure? I mean, it's Barney. You know how he is. He talks himself into things and you just end up going along with it." He sounds like he's trying to make a fair argument, not insult her husband, but she raises her shoulders, stung and a little irritated. "Let me finish," he says quickly. "You're always working, and Barney jets off to DC like twice a week to deal with FBI stuff and does his blog, but…" he shrugs. "I love Penny, and being a parent, more than I've ever loved anything, but it's not exactly a small commitment. Besides —" he gives her a sort of shifty look. "I thought you didn't want kids."

"I don't," she says without hesitating. "But," _I'm already pregnant_ , she doesn't say. "But what if I change my mind?" Ted lifts his eyebrows, and she picks a more plausible argument: "What if _Barney_ wants kids? I mean…" she hesitates, falls back on the excuse, "he wouldn't bring something like this up if he didn't mean it."

"Robin. _Hurricane_." She winces. Ted looks down at his ginger ale, taps his fingers against the glass. "Besides. You're not going to adopt a kid just because he wants one," he says. "You're _Robin Scherbatsky_."

"What if I want one because it'll make him happy?" she asks. Feminism 101 right there, she thinks bitterly, but it's true. It's not enough to make her do it, it's definitely not the only argument, but the _pros_ column is pretty sparse right now. And so what? What's wrong with wanting him to be happy? Wanting him to stay happy, to not get bored, to stick around? Believing his insane fantasies of a year of travel, of him watching the kid while she works? She pictures him with a well-dressed baby on his knee, watching the afternoon broadcast. He could write a book. She could keep her job. She likes older babies okay. Marvin's pretty cute, running around talking. Eventually they turn into actual people and everything. They could swing it. God, it's the most unrealistic daydream on the planet. But.

Ted's looking at her hurt, and she remembers suddenly that she dated Ted for a year a million years back and this was one of their sticking points. She swallows a gulp of soda too quickly; it sticks going down. She knows that it's not as distant for him as her, that their romantic history is not as easy for him to forget. That he never _really_ understood Barney-and-Robin as much as he loves them both individually. It must sting, but what can she say? Do? She won't lie for his sake. "Ted, I don't know what I'm thinking right now," she says quietly, an admission.

"Yeah," Ted says bitterly. To his credit, he shakes his head, shakes it off. He takes a moment to reply. "So, Barney wants to adopt, and you want him to be happy. But do _you_ want to adopt?"

"I'm not sure if I can _be_ a mother," she admits. "I don't think I have the… the anything for it." Until yesterday she hadn't even thought she had the _parts_ for it.

"You could adopt an older kid," he suggests, swirling his glass around in his hand so that the ice clinks. "Someone lower maintenance, more independent."

"Dude, I just told you, really seriously, that I'm afraid I'll be a crappy mom. Aren't you supposed to reassure me?"

"You'd be a great mom, Robin," he says seriously. He smiles, raises his hands. "It goes without saying, and I'm not just saying _that_. You're smart, you're fair, you're rational, you're loving… you'd strike fear into the hearts of any neighbourhood bullies… and you keep Barney in line, so what's a toddler in comparison?" She smiles, chuckles a little. But. "But," he finishes, "you can't let him pressure you into doing what _he_ wants."

"He'd be a great dad," she adds, needing to defend her husband, unable to shift the conversation away from Barney's apparent adoption fantasies. And he would be a great dad. She does love her nieces and nephews, but he lights up whenever he's around anyone under five. Natural empathy, or something. His need to be liked… his talent for talking to children, the most unconditional like-rs on the planet… and some of the most awed by magic tricks. But: his clothes, their clean and tidy home. Talking big and dreaming big and unconcerned at all with reality.

Ted sets his glass down on the table. "Are you sure everything's okay between you two?"

Her stomach turns. "What do you mean?" she keeps hold of hers, clenching it tightly between her palms.

"You snuck up to Westchester to… well, it sounds like you're trying to convince me to convince you to adopt a baby because Barney decided for no reason you guys need one." She can't keep eye contact. He's right; he's wrong. _I'm pregnant_ , she imagines telling him. Would he be on board if she said that? Why would that change anything? She came to Ted for his honest advice.

"It's not like that. Everything's fine between us." Robin rubs above her eye. "We've been married two years. Dude, we just had a Central American sex-cation, just for the hell of it. He literally bought the tickets a day before and surprised me with them. We barely even put on clothes the whole weekend."

"And _that's_ why I didn't look at your vacation pics," he says, and she smiles queasily. He continues more seriously: "Are you sure?"

"I'm not like you, Ted," she retorts. "I don't sit around trying to figure out how happy I am or am not." Until, you know, someone asks her directly, apparently.

It's a stupid question. She's happy. They've worked out a routine, a life. Bought furniture together. Kiss at the door when she comes home at night, order take out at nine or ten, have ridiculous amounts of sex later. Yesterday they'd both been freaked out and had even managed to have an _honest discussion_ , basically, with barely any yelling or panic attacks, and sex after all of _that_ emotion spewing. Isn't that everything a marriage is supposed to be? Her life is exactly where she wants it. Career on the verge of going places, husband she adores who loves her back ( _and_ her front, _hey-o_ ), great apartment… unexpected pregnancy. What if this ruins everything? Throws everything else off balance? What if Barney's fantasies all fade when he faces reality, when he thinks of some other new, fun thing? What if? Fuck. _She_ has everything she wants, but what if he doesn't have everything he wants? What if a kid is one of those things?

 _(Scherbatsky, brace yourself for something awesome: we're going to Nicaragua! This weekend! Pack your swim suit, we're doing this!)_

"I am happy," she says, swallowing, chasing her thoughts away, pretending Ted isn't looking at her like _that_ , like he's trying to find something to save. "We're both super happy. And, I mean, the whole baby thing worked out great for you guys and Lily and Marshall; why would we be different?"

"I don't know…" he says, maybe reluctantly? Come on, Ted, why would they be? She takes in a breath, but Penny saves the day by starting to fuss. See? Babies can be useful, she thinks. (Oh, totally another point in the _bad potential mother_ column.) Ted excuses himself and walks over to the baby chair thing, lifting up his daughter and sniffing at her. Ew, he just stuck his face right on her diaper butt. (point number three.) "I'm going to change her." He hesitates. "Unless you want to take a crack at it?"

 _No thanks,_ she kind of wants to say (and point four). "Lay her on me," Robin says, summoning up some bluster.

Ted leads the way upstairs to the nursery, turquoise and orange with robots and the New York skyline painted onto the walls. He hands her Penny, now more than halfway in tears, and Robin bites her lip and tries not to swear or touch anything directly as she changes her diaper. She _has_ done this before, okay. She _can_ do this. (she's at how many bad mother points now?) Just don't smell anything. Concentrate on those tiny little baby feet kicking around. The admittedly soft baby tummy. Penny laughs up at her at the feel of the wipe on her butt, and Robin's heart is almost — _almost_ — melted.

"I just don't think," Ted says, supervising closely, "that adoption is a solution for other problems."

"We don't _have_ other problems," Robin says testily. _I'm pregnant, Ted! Totally, completely, one hundred percent knocked up! We stopped using birth control like two years ago, and we do it enough that one time was bound to stick!_

"Then why would Barney suddenly want to have a kid?"

She goes cold, attaches Penny's diaper on as gently as she can when she suddenly wants to throw something. Is this what it is? She flashes back on their conversation so far. Barney's crazy ideas. His bad ideas. His whims. _She'd_ be a good mother, Ted says. Barney's just crazy and delusional. Is that how it is? "He loves kids," Robin says, suddenly angry at Ted, Ted who _always_ , always pulls this shit when it's Barney-and-Robin. _I'm pregnant, it's not his fault_. "That's not news, he's been spoiling Eli for like eight years now."

"I _know_ he does," Ted says, appeasingly, clearly itching to take Penny away from her. She steps back and lets him, grabbing a wipe and rubbing it over her fingers. Tossing it into the trash. "Barney's a great uncle. He's great with Penny."

"So why do you never have any faith in him?" Robin snaps, taking another step away. Watching Ted bounce Penny in his arms. "Or in _us_?"

"I do have faith, and I'm sorry. Barney's my best friend, you know I love the both of you." Maybe she's reading the patronising dad-voice into his tone, but she's still annoyed even with the apology. _This isn't on him, I got pregnant_. This is the point she should _say_ so, but she can't. Because then it would be her fault, and Ted would be angry at _her_. Why does it have to be either of their faults? Why can't this just be a good decision? "But look," he's saying. "You work a lot, and Barney's kind of… questionably employed right now, and I think he's a little bored at home."

"He's not bored at home," Robin scoffs, but it's like ice to her heart. _You're saying you'd be a stay-at-home dad?_ she'd asked him. _I don't know_. He'd suggested moving to about eight different countries. To _Canada_. "He's always going down to D.C, like you said."

"Which he doesn't really _have_ to do. I mean, the Feds have phones."

"Yeah, but when has Barney ever passed on the chance to go somewhere and have an adventure?" she says, raising her eyebrow. See? It's nothing. It's nothing.

"No, but… he's said some things," Ted says, looking at Penny. Her head spins. Her world goes blank. She shifts her weight back, avoids taking another step away. He looks at her, catches her expression. "Nothing bad, seriously, it's nothing serious."

"Ted, what the hell did he say?"

"Just that… he wanted to spend more time with you," he says vaguely. "Dude, seriously, he didn't say it in some big dramatic way. We told him to tell you, and then a couple of days later you guys were off to Nicaragua… I figured, hey! Problem solved."

 _(What are you talking about? We can't just take off to Nicaragua._

 _Come on! When was the last time we did something crazy fun?)_

She steadies her hand against Penny's crib. He'd never said anything to her. He'd never _once_ said anything to her. Why hadn't he? She wouldn't have been upset, right? She went on the trip with him, didn't she? They had a great time. (Until the part where she started hurling because _she's pregnant_.) All of Ted's worries about his motives suddenly make a lot more sense. The way he kept asking _how was your trip_?

( _she laughs, runs her hand over her cheek and kisses him. We can't go anywhere, I have to work._ )

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

"Robin?" Ted shifts Penny to one arm and puts his hand on her shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"He never said anything like that to me!" Coming home from work at eight or nine with a bag of take out, ordering from Seamless. Eating dinner, going to bed, out the door at six. Six days a week. Their perfect fucking routine. She messed up. She screwed the hell up. She hadn't known at all that he was feeling neglected, bored, and she thought for a second that she could handle a baby, too? And Ted was right! He _is_ bored at home, he just wants this kid because he needs something to occupy his time, because _she's_ clearly not around enough for him, and she's been the biggest idiot on the _planet_.

"Robin, I don't think it's a big deal," Ted says soothingly, rubbing her shoulder. It feels comforting. Brotherly. "It was just in passing."

"You have no idea what a big deal this is," Robin says weakly. She has to go home, and, uh, she'll think of something. Make it up to him. Spend time with him. Stop thinking about babies. Her mind spins, latches onto something. "You said 'we.' Who else did he talk to about this?"

"Me and Tracy," he explains. Hesitates a beat. "You're not the only one who sneaks to Westchester in the middle of the week," he jokes; she manages to twitch her mouth into something smile-ish. Sensing she wants more, Ted continues: "He just showed up for dinner, didn't call ahead or anything. Brought Penny a new toy, too." he gestures to a stuffed polar bear on a shelf. "We were chatting… like I said, Tracy's been really tied up with her doctorate. Stressed out."

Barney taking the train to Westchester for dinner, back before she's even home. Before she even knows he left. Robin knows, suddenly, how the conversation must have gone. Tracy venting about her life's work, about how bad she feels neglecting Ted and Penny; about how _perfect_ she is, so sweet and considerate. She likes Tracy a lot. _Really_. Just not in this second, in this fantasy, looking better than her, a better _wife_ than her and not even married; fantasy Barney learning towards Tracy and laughing: _please, I'm bored all the time because my wife works six days a week and sometimes Sundays!_ _But I don't complain because I support her career and her choices_! Forcing himself into the bathroom when she's puking. Arranging all his answers to what he guesses of hers. Fantasy after fantasy of a perfect life with baby. Offering to move to _Canada_. She's furious, guilty, sick.

"I don't think it went how you're thinking," Ted says, looking pretty worried. "He asked me if I missed Tracy when she wasn't around; I said of course I do; he said _me too_ and made his usual kind of joke about missing Trace when he really meant you; we told him to tell you about it and not us."

"And then instead of telling me about it," she says, kneading at her forehead, "he bought us first class plane tickets and pretended everything was okay." She almost decided to have a _baby_. To make him _happy_. Because he couldn't tell her what he really wanted, and she was too stupid to _see_. Christ. _I just need you. And I need you to be happy_. He'd said it, last night. She's married to the biggest idiot on the planet.

"Isn't it okay?" he asks.

"I don't know," she says, frustrated. "This got kind of way more real than I was hoping for. But no," she adds, before Ted gets the wrong idea. "It's okay. I just… I'm so stupid!" her voice getting high. "He's so stupid! I'm sitting here about to make huge life changes for him because I thought it was what he wanted; I _told_ him to tell me what he wanted, and he couldn't even tell me! I'm really goddamn angry with him right now!"

Ted laughs at her, not unkindly, and she's glad under her annoyance, because she is angry but it's frustration and guilt and not _real_ , and she thinks Ted gets it. "Come on, it's Barney, of course he's stupid," Ted says, moving past her to lay Penny in her crib. "You can't trust a word that man says."

"Sleight of hand," she mutters. Pulls her phone out of her pocket and checks for texts, messages. There's two from work. She ignores them, pulls up _swarley_ from her frequent contacts.

 _\- meet you at home in an hr?_

He texts back almost right away.

\- _yeah. something up?_

 _\- i love you_ , she types after some hesitation, and barely manages to keep from adding _you goddamn idiot_. "I have to go," she tells Ted. She should hug him right now, she wants to, but she settles for a pal-y shoulder punch. "Sorry to bail on you like this."

"Uh, sure, okay," he says, punching her right back and then giving her a quick hug anyway. "Sorry I freaked you out like that."

"Yeah, well," there's no helping that one. "You were a big help, honestly. I know what I need to do now. Starting with having a long talk with my husband." She pulls away. "We'll come and visit with beer soon, count on it."

"Oh, thank god, please do," Ted says, looking painfully hopeful. She chuckles, pats him on the shoulder more gently, lets herself out of the room.

She knows what she needs to do: talk to her husband, figure things out, make _him_ happy, and make another appointment at the doctor's, as soon as possible. They're not going to have this baby.


	4. The Master of Distraction

_i love the idea of tracy and barney as secret bffs, by the way. if nothing else, evil international finance guy vs economics disney princess? i bet they could have Talks about GPD and excise tax and traditional economies and no one else understands even the slightest thing coming out of their mouths. plus barney has that secret peace-corp-save-the-world backstory; they'd be_ tight _._

 _(someone, write that story.)_

 _i hate to be one of_ those _people and ask for reviews, but i'd really love some feedback about how i'm doing! i've never attempted a story quite like this before, and this fandom is so new to me — if at the end of this chapter you could let me know what you're thinking so far, i'd really appreciate it. we're nearing the climax very quickly._

 _the next chapter is a big one, and not just in word count._

* * *

 **Central Park North, Manhattan.**

 **Tuesday, August 18th.**

* * *

He manages to get Tracy out of Columbia and into Central Park before she really has time to think about it: his original goal is Morningside Park, but he doesn't spot any ice cream carts as they cut through it. At first Tracy complains, cites lame things such as 'boringness' and 'a need to do her work,' but he doesn't listen, and she relaxes visibly when the greenery comes into sight. _Who's the master?_ , thinks Barney proudly, and steers them into the shade. The day has turned sticky and hot, and Central Park is full of people sweating on benches and grass, trying to stay cool, like them, under the trees. "Oh, wow, it's seriously too hot today," Tracy says, stretching her arms and breathing in park air.

"Seriously," he agrees, busying himself with removing his tie, undoing his top button of his shirt, rolling up his sleeves. It's hot enough he didn't even bother with a jacket, but it's almost too hot for a long-sleeved shirt, too. Then again, it's never _really_ too hot to be well-dressed.) He catches Tracy watching as he undoes his shirt cuff, folds and rolls it carefully before sliding it up his arm, just barely past the elbow. "I know, right? Super hot," he commiserates, flexing his forearm a little. "I've been workin' out."

Tracy snorts with laughter. "Yeah, okay, 'cause that's obviously what I was thinking there."

"Totally understandable." He moves on to the other sleeve. "When was the last time _Ted_ hit the gym? Here, have a feel. See what you've been missing." She shakes her head, smiling. It's a little different, flirting with (joking with) Tracy. It doesn't really _work_. It's why he likes her. She's the one woman he hangs with who only ever knew him post-Robin. Who has, drug stores aside, never known him single, thought of him as less than the awesome he really is.

"You're like, crazy precise with your folding there," Tracy says, clearly not thinking about any of those things.

"Let Uncle Barney teach you a life lesson," he says eagerly, unrolling his sleeve. Apologising to Prada, he then shoves it up again, wrinkly and droopy and uneven. "I call this style the _Marshall_. See how lazy it looks? How unattractive? How it damages the fabric?" He turns his arm around. Tracy gives him about twenty percent of her attention. He shakes the cloth straight, then folds it back up, more evenly but much higher, a good few inches above the elbows. "This one is the _Ted_. The 'I looked at my best friend's blog _once_ , but didn't pay any attention' look. See how high my sleeve is? How tight? It's like I'm wearing a ballgown. No thanks." He undoes his sleeve once more and rolls it back up the right way, careful, precise, straight out of the pages of _Esquire_.

"You care more about clothes than any girl I have ever met," Tracy laughs.

"Can't help it if I'm the complete package, baby," he leers. Then: "Hey, do you want ice cream?" he asks excitedly, spotting a cart a little ways down the path.

"Heck yeah I do!" she crows, pulling her hair back into a ponytail. "Thanks so much for dragging me out of the library today," she continues, and he likes that she can just cheerfully _say_ that kind of thing, like it isn't a big deal to be nice. "I swear, I'm going to go blind if I keep at it much longer."

"Tracy, you're studying for your doctorate. You probably shouldn't be looking at porn," he says somberly, picking the low-hanging masturbation joke fruit. She snorts again.

He orders them both ungainly artificially coloured popsicles from the cart, hands one to Tracy, and they continue to wander at random down the path. For a minute it's just eating their popsicles and walking together. He likes this: licking stuff, not having a plan, not thinking too much about last night. He said his piece, put himself out there, and Robin didn't completely shoot him down. _And_ they were so tense that they had some _great_ sex afterwards. It was the cherry on the top of a weird, emotional night. Robin even did that _thing_ that she usually saves for special occasions. "Tap this," he says to Tracy, holding out his fist. Yeah, the stuff they got up to after the emotions and vomit and the bathroom _definitely_ deserve a bump.

Tracy's been pretty well trained in group matters, but she looks incredulous as she quickly returns the fist bump, like she's uncomfortable with this sacred method of expressing feeling. "Why are we tapping?" she asks. "Barney, you _know_ my family is from New Jersey, I can't do this as freely as you without reinforcing an ageing and harmful stereotype."

"Please, I'm from _Staten Island_." He waves his fist in front of her face again, until he gets a second tap.

"Ahh, little Jersey," she nods. Licks her popsicle. Barney heroically keeps his comment on the inside, and only because he really likes her and she's Ted's woman. "Are we bumping over these?" Tracy guesses, indicating her popsicle. "Or is it the other thing on your mind?"

"What other thing on my mind?" he says quickly, his voice sounding a lot like Robin's when _she_ lies.

"Hey," Tracy says, spreading her arms. "As crazy grateful I am for you dragging me into actual living daylight before I turned into a complete econ zombie, you totally have something else going on in there. I have mom brain now." She taps her temple with her free hand. "I _know you_."

"Pshhhaah," he says, or something like that, and licks up the dripping sections of his pop.

"In fact," she continues smugly, "I like to think of myself as your—"

"Protégé?" he guesses at the same time she finishes: "Life coach."

He smiles. "Tracy, last night was one of the worst of my life," he says, dramatically, spreading out his arm before them like a king addressing his subjects… and stops immediately. Why did he say that? "Wait. That's not true," he says. "Did I just have a Freudian slip? No! _No_! Dammit! It wasn't like that! But I said it! Does that mean that it's the truth?"

"Are you gonna let me in on this conversation you're running at some point?" Tracy grabs him by his elbow and steers them towards an empty bench in the shade. It's always benches with them.

He collapses down onto his end, resting his elbow on the back of it and licking confusedly at his popsicle to get the dripping under control. Tracy eats hers, too, waiting for him. "Last night was _weird_ ," he amends. "Robin yelled at me like, four times."

"Come on, you guys argue _all the time_ , that's not new," she says. Tracy sounds like she's consoling him, but he gets that greasy, slip-slidey feeling in his gut again. They _do_ argue a lot. Nothing big, and so far — a couple of nights crashing at Marshall and Lily's over the years aside — it's nothing that's stuck. So was last night a fight? Was the really good sex angry makeup sex? Did no one tell him? Crap, what if it _was_ a fight?

"We don't argue all the time!" he says in that weird high voice again. "Actually!" he adds, unable to help himself, jumping right back to the top of the old slippery slope: "we never fight. Ever. Not even once. Especially not last night!"

"Okaaay, I'm thinking you've got the wrong idea here," Tracy says, taking a bite off the top of her pop. "Like, yeah, you guys argue, but that's _good_. You're both crazy stubborn and competitive; of course you're going to argue, but it's just open communication and all that. Letting your views hang out there. You're like my Nana and Granddad, but Granddad lets more hang out there than just his _views_ , if you know what I'm sayin'." She takes another reflective bite of her popsicle. He reflects on Tracy's granddad. Feels himself relax. He'd really been bracing himself for a lecture. "So what was it this time? Thinking of getting an ottoman to go with the new sofa?"

He smirks. Furniture Wars: Episode V had taken two weeks and eventually involved every member of the gang. Then again, how could they make a decision like a new sofa _without_ involving the gang? Otherwise it'd just be her opinion versus his opinion, and it'll escalate to crazy levels and he'll have to spent thousands on a sky writer and maybe the others don't _like_ the new sofa and they'll just have to return it anyway. Putting it to a group vote is what made sense. ( _Everyone'd vote yes to a baby_. Robin will — he thinks the words _have to_ and hates himself; he doesn't want her to do something unless _she_ wants to. He really doesn't. And he's always loved that uncompromising part of her, the way she knows herself and isn't like him, changing from minute to minute. But still. That dream, that image, the two of them together, at home or travelling the world, baby makes three, and then for the rest of their lives they'll have that, a permanent chain — can't she learn to want it? Can he want it enough for them both?

Can he _be_ a worse, more selfish person? It was enough with just the two of them. It was always enough with just the two of them. He wants it to be enough with just the two of them. He wants it to _be_ the two of them. He's dripping popsicle onto his hand.)

A baby is a way more important decision than a living room set. He finishes off his popsicle slowly. Robin had _said_ not to involve the gang… but it's _Tracy_. His _life coach_ (slash protégé). "You have to swear not to tell anyone," he says.

Tracy's watching him, her eyes huge and luminous, the kind of word he doesn't usually use, but seriously, they're freaking Disney Princess eyes. "Uh, before I do, what is it?"

"I'm serious. You have to _swear_. You can't tell Ted or anyone," he says, pointing his popsicle stick at her. "Or I will exact my revenge on you on the day that you least expect it. I will hack your phone to play nothing but _Phantom of the Opera_ whenever you get a call, _forever_. I will make sure the first word out of Penny's mouth is _Uncle Barney_ and teach her swear words. I will get your final grade bumped down to an A minus. _I will change the 'designed by' plaque on the GNB building."_

"Okay," Tracy says, clearly alarmed, "isn't that last one a little more Ted-centric than —"

"I spent fifteen years lying about working for the Feds, don't think I can't pull this off."

"Okay," says Tracy, taking a deep breath. She rubs the bridge of her nose. "Okay, I swear. I won't tell anyone, even Ted."

"No matter what."

"No matter what." She raises her eyebrows slightly, her mouth a grim line of determination.

He looks at her for a second, in case she breaks. She meets his gaze unflinchingly. Barney turns away, facing out towards the park. The tall trees, the grass littered with sunbathers. The buildings in the distance, the unrelenting sun. He takes a deep breath. "Robin's pregnant."

Beat. "What?" Beat. " _What_?" she sits up, leans towards him. "No! No, what? I'm not hearing you right," Tracy says, laughing nervously.

"Ten weeks pregnant," he says, concentrating on an older couple walking a dog passing before them. One of those super fluffy tiny Chinese breeds. What are they called again? Sha Chas? Moo Shus? Sun Tzus?

"Ten _weeks_?" Tracy sounds a little hysterical, and Barney concentrates even harder on the dog, rolling his popsicle stick around in his hands, twirling it between his fingers, tapping it against his legs. Chow Mein? Wang Chung? "She's almost out of the first trimester!"

"She's been feeling sick for a week, she thought she caught something in Nicaragua. She was still sick Friday so she made an appointment." He feels defensive, like Tracy thinks Robin fucked up somewhere, when that's not the case. (Lo Mien? Pork Fried Rice?) "And, you know, it's not like we thought this could happen, and, and what the hell is the name of that kind of dog!" He points at the couple's backs. Now he's the one who sounds hysterical.

"Shih Tzu?" Tracy guesses with a glance. She looks back at him; reaches out, puts her hand on top of his. "Hey, are you okay?"

"Want to see something cool?" he exclaims, because this is getting to him a little; she _disapproves_ , she's looking down on them, she thinks they _fucked up_ (and argue all the time), and it's that thing like years ago, he doesn't want to be the screw up couple who everyone is just waiting to be over. Who accidentally gets pregnant. Accidentally makes a huge mistake. Turns into miserable shells of themselves and need to be separated for their own goods. "Hey, watch this!"

He snaps his popsicle stick in half, puts one half on the bench between them and holds up the other for Tracy to see. He slides his free hand over, makes it vanish, shows her his empty hands. " _A-_ hah!" Fumbles for the other half on the bench, clumsy, picks it up and does the same vanishing trick again. " _Voilà_!"

"That was neat, but—"

"And now, the grand finale!" he interrupts loudly: cups his hand and draws the popsicle stick, whole again, from his curled fingers. He hands it to her with a flourish.

"Wow, okay, that's pretty cool," Tracy says, and he's congratulating himself on a change of subject well done, but she puts her hand gently on his forearm. "But you can't just drop a bomb like that on me and change the subject."

"Aw, I knew you'd wanna feel me up sooner or later," he says, looking at her hand. She pulls away.

"Could you stop changing the subject? This is _big_ , this is _really huge_!"

" _Nnngh…_ Okay, fine! It was your popsicle stick I made appear, I grabbed it when I was pretending to drop the second half of _my_ popsicle stick!" he exclaims, and his heart stops. "Holy crap, I just told you my trick. You're not even a fellow magician! I'm so freaked out that I'm breaking the code! Tracy, we have to deal with this."

"Yeah, we do! Barney, you're freaking out, _I'm_ freaking out, and Robin —"

"I have to make you a magician," he continues hysterically. "It's the only way I can fix this! We'll start with some basic sleight of hand, work you up to card tricks and that thing with the doves—"

She slaps him. It isn't exactly a Marshall-level slap, or even a bimbo-level slap; it's barely more than a light tap, somewhere between 'to wake yourself up when groggy' and 'there there, kiddo.' But she's never slapped him before, and the surprise more than the (very slight) sting brings him to his senses. "Oh my god, I'm so sorry," she's already saying, and sounds like she means it. "Ted's always saying I should just slap you if I need to, but I've never actually slapped someone before, are you okay? Did that hurt? Should I get you some ice?"

 _Aww_ , he thinks. "That slap was adorable," he says reassuringly, not even feeling it anymore.

"Um, okay," she says. They look at each other for a second. She raises her finger at him in a way she's totally ripped off from Ted. "Okay. We need to take a couple of deep breaths and deal with this."

They take a few deep breaths. He concentrates on his breathing. Finally: "Robin's pregnant," he says. Every time, it's like a twist in the gut. Every time, he thinks _and maybe_ , and sees a little boy in a suit in the bench opposite this one. Imagines the three of them travelling together. Imagines Robin hurrying home after work with take out bags, having family dinners, all that crap. Going to museums together.

"Ten weeks."

"Yeah."

"Are you guys…" Tracy hesitates. "Going to keep it?"

"We don't know yet?" he admits.

"Because, at ten weeks, you don't have a lot of time to think about it," she points out carefully.

"Yeah, I know." He's quiet for a minute. "Robin doesn't really want to have a kid."

"But you do?" He looks at her. She can always read his mind, somehow, and it's kind of scary. Tracy reads it again right there and lifts her hands in a _woah there_ gesture. "Hey, buddy, that entire sentence screamed 'but.' Let's figure this out."

Heh. Screaming butts. He smiles half-heartedly. "I don't know. I never thought I did. I think that if this hadn't happened, I probably never _would_ have wanted it, or thought about it at all. But now that I know it's… there…" he sighs. "I don't know, it's different."

Tracy considers this. He waits for her to tell him that he's wrong. "Actually? I get that," she says. "I mean, I always planned on having kids, but I did kind of think we'd wait a couple of years, until our lives were a little more in order, ya know? But the second I found out… none of that mattered anymore. It was just… _pshaw_! Whatever! All I wanted was Penny. She's the greatest thing that's ever happened to us."

"Maybe this kid could be the greatest thing that's ever happened to me and Robin," he says, hardly daring to admit it. Their kid could have everything they never did growing up. They have money, stability, they love each other, and he knows he'd love this kid. He knows Robin would, too. She _would_.

"Okay, can I be real here?" Tracy asks. She turns on the bench, curls one leg up under her, rests her elbow on the back of the bench and clasps her hands. An informal position; a comfortable one. He nods. "Why do you suddenly want kids so badly?"

"It's like you said," he says, not sure where she's going with this. "I never thought about it, and now it might happen, and it made me think. Maybe this is what's supposed to happen. For us. Like Penny."

"I totally get knowing a kid's on the way and wanting her more than anything," Tracy says. "It's just, hey, me and Ted had the most unplanned pregnancy _ever_. But we _did_ already plan on having kids. You guys didn't. I'm just not sure an unplanned pregnancy is the way you two roll." she holds up her hand in a _stop_ gesture. "It's not _wrong_ , because, hello, have you _seen_ Penny? It's just not the way you roll."

"Robin can't _have_ kids," he says, waving his arm. "Okay, obviously we need to check back with Dr Sonja on _that_ one, but we've banged almost every day for two and a half years — usually _twice_ a day, what up —" pause for brief high five that Tracy doesn't reciprocate, "and this is the first time this has happened. She might never get pregnant again. And, let's face it," he says, raising his eyebrows, _just throwing it out there_ , _it ain't a thing,_ "she's getting kind of _old_."

"Dude, you're _forty_."

"I'm thirty-four." He lifts his chin.

"And there are other ways of having kids and you _know_ it," Tracy continues, ignoring that. "Ted _told_ me about Not-A-Father's-Day. I just think if you're changing your mind _this_ much, we need to figure out why. _Not_ because I have doubts and think you'll change your mind back," she says, before he can even say it.

"Seriously, how do you do that? Are your freakishly huge Disney eyes mind reading portals or something?"

"Hey, I toldja," she says with a smug tilt of her head. Raises her palms in a wide shrug. " _Life coach._ " He crosses his arms. She continues smugly: "We met at a kind of low point in your life, and we had a real, honest conversation once you stopped trying to get my number. You can't fool me because I saw that part of you _first._ Plus, I've always been a sucker for a sob story." She shrugs. "So, Stinson," she says, leaning in like she's waiting for a secret: "give it to me straight. Has there ever been a time in your life you've wanted kids before one landed in your lap-slash-Robin's uterus?"

He's going to say no, and then realises. He leans forward, staring at the grassy area across from them, seeing instead fallen leaves and the first light sprinkling of snow. His mouth is dry. Ace in the hole. Now no one can say he's just going on a whim. "A few years ago, before we were," he waves his left hand vaguely; the ring there. Before they were engaged, before they were together, but long after he'd fallen head over heels in love. "There was a thing; Robin had a pregnancy scare. That's kind of how she found out she couldn't have kids."

"Hang on," Tracy frowns, "Ted told me about when _he_ found out about that," and wow, does Ted have like, no boundaries? (But then again, here he is telling Tracy, and he knows most of the gang's intimate thoughts and movements over the last ten years, so, you know, carry on, Theodore.) "and he never mentioned a pregnancy scare. She was dating Kevin?" Stupid freaking Kevin, he thinks. "And they broke up because she couldn't have kids, even though he proposed." He hopes Kevin is rotting in a ditch somewhere. "But Ted said she already knew then that she couldn't have kids… he never said anything about a pregnancy scare…" Her eyes widen as she makes an intuitive leap. "Ohh! _Oh_ , but _you_ hooked up with her, didn't you! Oohh, it was _you_! It was like four years ago and I didn't even know you guys back then, but oh my god!"

"Yeah, well," he mutters, reminded by this trip down memory lane how much he hates Kevin (Jackass. Slimy loser asshole). Then he bolts back up right, making a realisation of his own. "Oh! Ohh, crap, Trace!" Snaps his fingers, leans towards her, puts his hands on her shoulders and presses down, bracing her. "Shit, Trace, you can't tell _anyone_. Swear! You have to swear not to tell anyone we thought I knocked Robin up back then, and that was when she found out the baby thing, and it was a _really_ shitty month for me and— and, it was worse for her, swear it. I'll lick every piece of furniture in your house and all food in your fridge, swear you won't tell."

"I swear," she says, looking disgusted and overwhelmed. "But this is _huge_. Why is it such a secret? Aside from the obvious… cheating stuff."

He licks his lips. Swallows. "Uhm. I don't really want to talk about that part." Lets go of her shoulders. Sits back again. It's over, it's the past, but he remembers and remembers the worst part, the _lead-up_ , when he'd thought it was the start of everything, not the end. It _wasn't_ the end. But at the time… and then she'd said she was pregnant… Stares up at the trees. Speaks fast, to get it all out, because this is _good_ , this definitely proves he's serious about this kid. "But, okay, see, my _point_ is, she told me she was pregnant and I wanted the kid. I wanted that kid. I mean later I kind of ran into an old friend and … yeaa _hhhh_ , okay, not so much, and she wasn't pregnant anyway, but we're _together_ now, we're _already_ a couple this time."

Tracy's quiet for a while, her mind probably blown by his trump card, his proof, his dirty laundry and big secret. Fuck, he _really_ hopes she doesn't tell anyone about that. She's been good with secrets so far, but this is a big one. "Okay," she says after a good silence, brushing sticky stands of hair off her cheeks, taking another moment to redo her ponytail. "Question two. How was Nicaragua?"

"Awesome," he says instantly, not sure what the connection is, not minding the change of subject. He lifts his hips, pulls his phone from his pocket. Unlocks it, pulls up some pictures. "Check it, our suite was _sweet_. Sweet, suite, nice." Tracy takes one look and raises her hands and jumps back and makes an _Eauugh_ face. And sound.

"Okay, buddy, more than I needed to see just now." She pushes the phone back at him. He winks at her. "And _so_ not what I was asking. You went there to spend some time together, didn't you? _Reconnect_?"

" _Shyeah_ ," he says, trying to show her the phone again. "Did you not see that stunning example of one-on-one _reconnection_?" She doesn't high five him, but she's a delicate Disney princess and he understands that about her. "It was great," he repeats, marginally more seriously. Remembers coming home from Westchester ready to tell her everything, apologise for vanishing.

Tracy nods, still steadily looking ahead of them and not at him in case of more selfies. "You didn't talk at all, did you?" He'd come home to find their apartment empty and dark. She'd come home from work an hour later. He'd bought the tickets by then.

"Nope," he says, snapping the last syllable. This time, he's the one to head her off at the pass. "We didn't _need_ to talk about us, because _us_ is doing great. We spent all last weekend together, we spent all of _this_ weekend together, _plus_ Friday, _plus_ yesterday, so clearly, the trip worked fine. Robin just needed, you know, a breather. That's the whole point of vacations."

"You spent this weekend and Friday together because Robin was sick because she's two months _pregnant_ ," Tracy says, a touch impatiently. "You spent yesterday arguing about her being pregnant."

"And banging," he sulks, feeling down again. He turns his phone over in his hands.

"I'm just saying…" Tracy scratches her forehead. "A few years ago Robin has a pregnancy scare with you while she's dating someone else: you get excited about having a baby. This past month you've been complaining that she's caught up with work and you're left out… and now she's pregnant and you're excited again."

He has an inkling where she's going with this, and interrupts, his hand clenching around his phone and throat weirdly tight — "Or, _or_ , the two times Robin has been or thought she was knocked up, I've wanted a kid with her because I want to have a kid with her."

"The first time we met, you told me you wished you could have another chance with her," Tracy says, catching his impatience, unblinking, her eyebrows raised. "Tell me right now you weren't thinking that when she was dating Kevin." He breaks first, looking out towards the sunbathers. She doesn't have to say anything else.

He's angry at her, suddenly, in a sick rush: for saying it, for thinking she knows what it was like that November, the way things had gone from — the moment in a musical, the music building higher and higher and stopping, coming to a sudden stop… and then the last-chance miracle, she'd _have_ to pick him if she was having his baby, the sick reality of the whole thing and they way they'd just… stopped talking, she'd gotten serious with Kevin, and he'd realised she'd never once felt the same. And in the end, the final act reversal, that none of that had been real. But that's not now, that has nothing to do with now, except he has a sick feeling Tracy has a point.

"I _want this kid_ ," he says, stubbornly. It's _not_ that. Tracy's wrong, anyway: yeah, okay, lately things _have_ been a little strange, off-rhythm, him on call all the time, waiting for the Feds to call him, waiting for Robin to call him, waiting for anyone to call him. Her working late, getting home only in time for sex and bed. And, hell, isn't that the kind of relationship he used to dream of? Not the sitting around, waiting for someone to fucking _need_ him, but a hot chick in his bed all night, every night, none of that extra relationship stuff… _hell yeah_. Except: it sucks. It _sucks_. Waiting around, not wanting to text, not wanting to — to _care_ , to be stuck being the one waiting around, to know that if he takes off for Washington she'll be too busy to even miss him — it sucks. When did he turn into such a fucking girl? He hates it. But he _fixed_ it, and it's not just the past weekend and Friday; Robin _has_ been more relaxed, less stressed, _happier_. Home earlier. He found out how to fix things, that's all — take her away for a weekend and get them a nice suite. He figured it out. Solved it. Has this good husband thing down; _is_ a good husband. Isn't that what marriage is? Figuring out how to make your wife happy? Keep her happy and happy to be home?

And she's _thinking_ about it, about the baby. She needs him. She said so last night. And she's Robin fucking Scherbatsky, and she doesn't need _anyone,_ and that makes it all the more important that he doesn't let her down, he doesn't drive her away, he learns how to do these things: tend to infants, not care about suits — well, dress down around babies, anyway — take care of her, take her on vacations, make her happy, hug her when she's sad and support her in every way he can. Because he needs _her_. Because she's _it_ , and there's no back up plan.

And soon they might have a kid, and. And it's not _just_ this pathetic — emotion — girl stuff, because they might have a kid. The most awesome kid in the universe. The one he imagined four years ago, and the one he's imagining now. The perfect mix of the two most awesome people on the planet. Their son — or daughter — would take over the freaking world. They'd take him everywhere. To the zoo. To the park. To Korea. To Canada. Like, once, just so he could see how much it sucked. He could play with his cousins, Stinsons and Eriksens and Mosbys, and they could be a new version of the gang. He could take their kid to meet Jerry, and Jerry'd say _I'm proud of you for fixing yourself, and by the way your son is awesome_. They could put the stormtrooper in the nursery to look out for him. They could get a dog. Robin could take him to work with her, put him on the news for being so freaking awesome. He could be a good dad, he _could_ , and Robin'd be the best mom in the universe, and it'd be the three of them forever and ever.

"You know what?" he says, hearing his voice go higher, his eyebrows up; he tilts his head slightly at Tracy, "You're right. I don't want kids." She exhales and he's annoyed with her some more. "Unless they're with _Robin_ , obviously!" Two for two, he reminds himself. (Does all this psychobabble really matter? It's the _result_.) "Okay, fine," he continues cheerfully, " _yeah_ , we've been cooling down a little. Everyone does that after a couple of years." If she says _not me and Ted_ he might throw something. At her. "But I'm awesome — and not just in bed — and fixed that already! The sad fact is that I'm awesome, and Robin's awesome, and together we're awesome _infinity_ , just like together you and Ted are losers infinity. And if the two of you and Marshall and Lily can handle accidental pregnancies, you know we can kick your _asses_ at accidental pregnancies."

He feels kind of moved by his own words, they doing their usual work to convince him, fill him with their truth and wisdom. He stands from the bench: this is a standing, big arm movements kind of proclamation. "Sure, it'll be hard. There'll be weird stains and fluids and Robin will lose her figure for a while. But we love our nieces and nephews and have both changed diapers in the past, so let's face it, _our_ kid is going to blow all those little bastards out of the water. But, you know, Trace, you're right: Robin and I do have to talk. Talk _baby names_."

She leans forward with a groan, resting her forehead in her hands. "Barney, come on. You were _soclose_ and now you're slipping."

He takes a deep breath, lets it fill his entire body. "No, I'm not," he says confidently. "We do have other stuff to talk about, okay? But what you're forgetting is that we are freaking _legendary_." He puffs out his chest. "We're going to _kill_ this baby thing. Not kill. _Knock_ this baby thing out of the _park_. Why do I keep saying kill?" And then, like the eighth sign from the universe that this is the right thing to do, that his excitement is justified, Barney's phone buzzes in his hand with a text from his awesome wife/the mother-to-be.

 _\- meet you at home in an hr?_

His heart, his mood, flutters a little. Robin's usually pretty direct, and this sounds a little… _we need to talk_ -y. Given his rousing speech, he had hoped for something more along the lines of _let's rock_.

\- _yeah. something up?_ he texts back. Then again, if this _is_ the talk, maybe they're going to make their decision, and then they can tell their friends and he can pretend to tell Tracy for the first time and Robin won't find out he blabbed! And they can plan a baby shower! He has all kinds of gifts for himself in mind (baby showers are for the parents-to-be, right?).

\- _i love you_ is Robin's reply, and his smile splits his face. "Check it," he says, flashing the texts at Tracy. "Everything's totally fine with us and the _baby_. You guys get all worried for nothing."

Tracy looks at him and his walls a little sadly. He feels his smile weaken, soften; he manages to shrug one shoulder at her. "Anyway," he says, a little more real; "I'm meeting Robin back home in an hour, but you've been really nice listening to me; wanna grab a bite to eat?" It's only like a ten minute cab ride home, and he _does_ appreciate Tracy, just not the mean things coming out of her mouth. And even though she said them, she didn't try to tell him what to do. Tell him how to fix things. Try to break them up.

"Yeah, sure," she says with a little sigh. Like she expected more from him, didn't see the ending coming. Even that isn't so bad, he thinks privately. He doesn't want to delve too deeply into that; that he likes her because she can still _be_ disappointed in him. The important part is —

"I kinda feel like Greek; how about it?" he asks brightly, fixing his shirtsleeves. "We can get gyros and you can tell me all about ending world poverty through economic sanctions and other Disney crap. Did I ever tell you about the time I helped GNB push trade regulations with Central America through congress? Spoiler alert: prices went up, but not for us."

"Oh, man, this story is going to make me cry, isn't it?" Tracy asks, visibly forcing herself to perk up and swallow her disappointment.

He smiles, not because of fond GNB memories, and leads her up and out of Central Park. "Bro, you're talking to an _industry expert_. Let me show you how it's done."


	5. The Races

_i'm not sure offhand if robin's (or anyone's) mental map of new york would be good enough to offhandedly go 'oh, w 113th, that's morningside heights' so i stuck for a generic 'uptown.' sorry to any new yorkers who know by instinct exactly what street divides what neighbourhood! it is a sixth sense that i lack! (this is like the most useless footnote in the world, isn't it.)_

 _this chapter was crazy hard to write, and next chapter will probably be even harder. originally this was supposed to end on much a worse note, but next chapter is the climax — we're almost there!_

* * *

 **Upper East Side, Manhattan.**

 **Tuesday, August 18th.**

* * *

It's closer to two hours later by the time Robin finally makes it home, thanks to an accident on 9A south, but when she does, the apartment is empty. It's like the air from a balloon: two hours of waiting, of trying to come up with plans and speeches… and Barney's not even home. She tries not to think about it, the things Ted said and how usually it's her husband coming home to an empty apartment, how he has been able to slip out and back without her even noticing.

She focuses on her anger, because it's easier. Checks for texts, missed calls. Nothing. It doesn't mean anything, necessarily — the man is notoriously easy to distract — but she clenches her jaw. She _told_ him, he'd agreed. Why is he always like this? Why does he just…? ( _Do what she does?_ )

Her back and shoulders hurt from all this tension. Robin goes to the kitchen for a glass of water, kneading the base of her spine, annoyed and upset and still replaying her conversation with Ted again and again and again. That Barney's unhappy. Or bored and feeling neglected, which she thinks, to him, is close enough. Her mouth goes dry, and she takes a gulp of water. She wishes she'd never gotten pregnant in the first place. And where _is_ he?

She gives him a call, and he picks up on the first ring in his usual boisterous _didn't check the call ID_ way. "Go for Barney!"

"Where the hell are you?" and as much as she _isn't_ angry at him as much as herself, she's also _really_ annoyed. He said he'd be here. He's _said_ a lot of things, recently. Just not to her.

"Oh, hey, Robin! I'm on West 113th!" he says, not picking up on her tone.

"Oh, okay, sweetie," her voice loving and sweet. This lasts about two seconds. She hopes he's cringing. "What the _hell_ are you doing uptown? You said you'd be home an hour ago!" She feels and sounds like a gross, naggy wife, and hates it. She kneads her knuckles into her spine. The shooting pain there. Like even her body is peeved.

"Uhh…" He hesitates, and she's glad he's finally feeling awkward about this. "I'm having lunch with Tracy?" he says guiltily, and then his voice gets fast and manic and she knows him well enough to visualise the rest. " _Had_ lunch," he corrects. "But now I've paid —" There's a beat between _now_ and _I've_ as he pulls out his wallet; throws down some cash; she can hear his phone brush against his hair, clothes ruffling, the low voice of Tracy asking _is everything okay_? as he hugs her goodbye. There's a scraping noise as he pushes back his chair. Barney's breath speeds up and she hears the chime of a door opening; the sudden background noise of the streets. "And _now_ …" Short pause; she pictures him moving up the street on the lookout, hears a door open, he's always been the taxi whisperer — shuffling noises, a small _oof_ — "I'm in a cab on my way home!" he finishes triumphantly. In an undertone to the driver: "81st and 1st." And, the coup de grâce, as he reads the driver ID card: "And step on it. Adebayo, right?"

She takes a deep breath and sighs it out, trying very hard not to be charmed by her husband's technical lack of lying and love of befriending taxi drivers. "You have ten minutes to get home," she says. "I'm not responsible for what happens if you're late." She hangs up on that dramatic beat.

Truthfully, she has no idea what she'll do if she's late, but this means that when he arrives he'll be so eager to not be in trouble she won't have to make good on her threat. She finishes her water and goes to curl up on the sofa, mentally and emotionally drained. She'd spent the entire drive planning what to say, and now all the wind is out of her sails, all her momentum crushed by Barney's thoughtlessness. He didn't even mean to, and that's the worst part. She rubs her forehead. He probably just lost track of time, hanging out with Tracy…

And since when was he going to hang out with Tracy today? She knows she literally doesn't have a leg to stand on, driving to Westchester and back and telling him 'errands,' but why Tracy? Tracy, who seems to appear whenever he has a problem to solve? ( _He's said some things. Me and Tracy._ ) Her stomach knots on itself; she feels nauseous. She refills her glass and sips from it.

Barney bursts in the door seven minutes later. "We ran six lights!" he announces, out of breath. His sleeves are rolled up and his top two buttons are undone. It's a good look for him. (Now is _not_ the time to want to jump him, she reminds herself. As good as angry sex is.)

"Great, so you're an hour and fifteen minutes late instead of an hour and a half," she says, her voice cutting, and winces at the same time he does. Hides it better.

He hesitates at the door, shifts his weight. Closes it behind him, takes a moment to stall: puts his wallet and keys on the shelf, adds his phone, removes his tie from his back pocket and turns it in his hands. "I lost track of time, okay?" His voice is whiny. He looks stubbornly at the silk in his hands.

 _Whatever. It's not a big deal,_ she thinks about saying, but he's whining and it digs into her skin. She's pregnant, everything hurts, he's complaining about her to their friends and wants a kid to save their marriage and she hadn't even known he thought it needed saving. Her back hurts, she's queasy, and she just wants it all to go away. She's tired and she's angry and she's scared, and she wants to say _just come here_ and she wants him to cheer her up, but she opens her mouth and it all comes out as: "I literally asked you one thing, and you couldn't even do that!" Shit.

He works his jaw, wraps his tie around his neck. "I was hanging with Tracy," he says. "You should have called me before if —"

"I'm not your _Mommy_!" she snaps. "I shouldn't have to chase after you to get things done!" And in some sick way, she feels better, taking this out on something. On someone. Everything spitting from her body like poison. Better to be angry, better to be on the attack, better to not be afraid, to not be hurting, to not be vulnerable. She watches him move his fingers. Wrap his tie around his neck and tie it, button his shirt, roll down his sleeves. Every movement sharp and precise. Every defence on high alert.

"No, but — look, I _forgot_ , okay? We were talking and I —"

"Talking about what?" she sits up, gripping the back of the sofa in one hand.

He's bewildered, tilting his head. "Why does that matter?"

"Well, I mean, you forgot all about me, it must have been a pretty important conversation, right?" Spitting acid. Her heart racing, her whole body tense, pain twisting through her heart and gut. _He's said some things. I think he's a little bored at home. We told him to tell you._ But he didn't! He told Tracy, was probably telling Tracy again. Ever since they met she's been this mythical… advice… person for him, and she remembers hearing the story of their first meeting before even knowing who Tracy was, but why _does_ she get that job? Why does Barney go to her? Is Robin that cold? Why does she keep saying the wrong fucking things?

He sets his jaw, and she can see that her hits have landed, sunk, he's angry now, too, and in that same sick way, she's glad for it. "Okay, you know what? We were talking about the freaking _Eurozone_ ," he says, his voice low with anger. "What did you think we were doing? Hitting up a strip club? I don't need you to _babysit_ me, I was one fucking hour late, you don't even trust me that long?"

And it's off to the races.

"No, I _didn't_ think that, but if _that's_ the first thing your mind goes to—"

"Yeah, I'm going to _cheat_ on you, with _Ted's fiancée_ , you fucking caught me—"

"You're the one who keeps bringing it up! So, what, if it wasn't _Ted's_ fiancée, you'd be all over it?"

"No! Of course not!"

She's sickly satisfied by the way he reels back, his eyes growing large and uncertain, the way she won the round, hurt him. The satisfaction is thin and oily, quickly evaporating, and she's going to throw up. What the hell is wrong with her? No wonder he doesn't tell her when he's — "I, I'm sorry," she says. _I didn't mean that. It's pregnancy hormones or something, you know I_ —

But he rallies, hides himself again, builds himself back up first. "So, what, when you said _meet me at home,_ it was just so you could drag me through shit?" he asks coldly, rigid with anger. "Why the hell are you so pissed off? Because you're not working today and I wasn't around to keep you entertained? I'm not _your_ babysitter, either!"

"No! You know where I was, I was —"

"Ooh, ooh, I know! I know! WWN!"

"— Westchester!"

"What the hell were you doing —"

"That's none of your business!"

"Like hell it isn't!"

"And Ted had some interesting things to say about you when I was there!"

"Hang on! _Hang on_. You're giving me crap about hanging out with Tracy, _forty blocks_ from here, but you went fifty _miles_ to fucking _White Plains_?"

"Maybe I wouldn't have to go to _fucking_ White Plains if you'd talk to me like a goddamn grownup!"

"No, okay, _no_ , you're being the hypocrite here, you don't get to —"

"I don't _get_ to? Are you trying to tell me _you_ get to decide —"

"You know what?" he half-shouts, making an expansive, cutting arm gestures, "I don't have to deal with this! If I knew this is what you wanted to talk about, I wouldn't have even bothered coming home!" And she sees, actually sees, him shift, start to turn, like he's preparing to go and walk right back out of their home. Just like he used to. Her anger intensifies, but so does her fear, white hot and shooting down her spine.

"Well, it's not! It's not, okay?" she stands up, knocking a throw pillow to the floor in her haste; her vision going white and her body heavy. "I _wanted_ to talk about the goddamn _baby_ , but if you have better things to do, go on and do them!" He freezes. Moves his jaw. Looks askew over at her, and she sees the hurt in his eyes. "Because you can go wherever you want and _I_ can go wherever I want, but I'm still pregnant!"

It's like ice water over them both. All at once she can't breathe, and her legs shake: she sinks back down onto the sofa and watches Barney's hand fumble, reaching out to grip the half wall at the door. In the sudden, complete silence, neither of them apologise.

It stretches on for years. "I want to talk about that," he says at last, his voice shaky. He takes a cautious step towards her.

She had plans for this conversation once. "How can we have a kid like this?" she asks.

Barney stops mid-stride. "What?"

"We can't have a kid! Look at us!" She looks down at her hands, spreading her fingers flat in her lap to avoid clenching them into fists. For the first time today, Barney does exactly the right thing. The sofa dips under his weight, his thigh pressing against hers, his arm encircling her shoulder. She leans into him. "Look at _me_."

"I am," he says, pulling her close, brushing his hand over the top of her breast, gives it a little squeeze. "No, same size as always." The corner of her mouth twitches upwards, she can't help it, but her stomach feels greasy and twisted and the anger still thuds in her joints, and she can tell by his voice he's faking it. She wants to cry and won't let herself. He slides his hand back to her shoulder, brushing back her hair, stroking absently at her neck with his thumb. Little, comforting movements. "What's wrong?"

She laughs bitterly. "Everything's wrong, don't you get it? I feel sick all the time, my back is killing me," (Barney, always happy for the opportunity to cop a feel, drops his hand to the base of her spine, fingers trailing up and under her shirt.) "And — and I'm still still really mad at you."

He laughs quietly, glances at her askew. "You'll get over all that."

"This isn't the kind of thing you just get over."

She keeps saying the wrong things. Barney's quiet for long enough that she wonders if she's really hurt him, tries to guess from the way he's holding himself, from how his hand has stilled against her. If they're about to start yelling again. "In a month or, I don't know, two, you won't have this morning sickness stuff anymore. And… you won't be mad at me anymore, either, right?"

He sounds so cautiously hopeful that she can't help a weak smile. "Depends on what you're doing in a month or two." He runs his fingers up along her spine, a nail tracing each bump of her spine, his thumb sliding along under the band of her bra. She shivers.

They're quiet for a minute, trying to forget the shouting, clear their heads and hearts. Barney teasing at the edges of her bra. She really, honestly, doesn't feel like sex right now, but he never takes it farther, never undoes the clasp, his touch feather-soft. She wants to ask him to move his hand lower, it's the base of her spine that's killing her, but feels herself relaxing by increments, concentrating only on his fingers, letting go of the pitching in her gut.

"It'll all be okay. We're going to be great parents," Barney says, after several minutes. "Like, we're seriously going to kick everyone else's asses with this kid. It's going to be awesome."

It all comes rushing back. Her limbs go cold and numb, her core grows hot, her heart stutters in her chest. "What? We're not having this baby."

He goes still. "What?"

"I mean, I don't want a baby!" she says, feeling the anxiety twist. She blinks rapidly. "And neither do you!"

His hand drops down and away. "What? Yes, I do." His voice tight and high.

"No, you don't!" she says impatiently. "I talked to Ted!"

He scoots away from her on the sofa, enough that he can turn and look her in the eye. "So _Ted_ told you I don't want a kid?" She takes in a breath and feels it shake, her throat and lungs burn, and she's about to explain even though she shouldn't have to, but he continues: "And since Ted said it, you just believe it, right?"

" _No_!" she snaps instead. _Unpause_ , she thinks inanely. Lily. She should have gone to Lily. She shakes her head, her vision blurred; she's dizzy. "But he had some things to say about you, since you mention it!"

"Of course he did!" Barney snaps, standing up and away, his face twisted up with uncharacteristic anger at his best friend. "Ted's always had lots of things to say about how shitty I am at —"

"Acting like a grownup?" she spits, not liking the angry self pity, the way Barney is assuming her and Ted's talk. He flinches, she presses the advantage: "I'm not having this baby. It's not up for discussion!"

"What the hell," he demands, spreading his arms, the coffee table dividing them, his body taut, "did you talk about? What were the things Ted said about me? That I'm a crappy husband? That I don't act like a _grown up_? Because _you_ said you'd think about it, yesterday you wanted this, but I guess _Ted_ was able to set you straight! Great job, Ted!"

And she sees it, there, under the angry, manic bravado, the lines on his face, the way he looks his age when he's upset. And she wants to be angry, too, that he thinks she wanted this the day before — because he's right, because she had talked herself into it, but _she's_ right, too, and she _is_ angry, because he's acting like a spoiled child who isn't getting his way. He's always been an insecure bastard underneath it all, but he should know better, by now, too, and it sends the anger and misery alight in her stomach; doesn't he believe in _her_?

Lily, she should have gone to Lily, she should have gone to someone with _answers_ instead of the answers she wanted to hear. No, she realises, too late: she should have gone to _her husband_. He should have gone to her. Why do they always go to other people? She had had things she wanted to say. She presses her fist to her mouth, bites the knuckle of her first finger, blinks rapidly.

He takes her silence as an answer, and the fight goes out of him. He stands before her, drained and empty, and it hurts her, and yes, the anger flutters in her, too, that he's looking like she betrayed him, doesn't want a child with him because it's him, that he assumes the worst of her and lets it break his heart. Yes: it leaves her angry. Yes: it makes her want to cry.

She takes in as deep a breath as she can, forces the words out, the iron weights in her stomach and heart. "He said you aren't happy anymore," she says, and it comes out weak and fragile and she swipes at her eyes at the back of her hand and sees her knuckle is white and pinched where she bit it. "He said we only went to — to Nicaragua because I'm never around and you're unhappy with me, and you never _said anything,"_ because she is still angry, because she's lost and his heart isn't the only one breaking.

She waits for him to jump to reassure her, and tries to not read into his silence, his stillness. She's not even sure he's breathing.

"And you know what?" she continues, not able to look at him, physically unable to lift her eyes, wiping _at_ her eyes, her rings scraping against her forehead, "you can't even deny it! How can you want to have a baby with me when you—"

"I love you," he interrupts, like it's so easy, and is that the answer or the reason? She looks up at him, quick, his eyes huge and blue in the way they always are when he's upset, but he doesn't go to her, and she looks back down at her hands. "And — none of that matters anymore!"

"Of course it matters, Barney!" she says, looking at the mascara on the back of her hand.

"No! No, Robin, it doesn't. We're going to have this baby, and we're all going to be so happy—"

"I'm not having a baby to make you happy!" The anger rolls back, and she glares up at him, and he swallows and moves half a step back. He was right: she _had_ wanted this yesterday, been willing to jump through hoops to talk herself into this, but she knows now that _she_ is right, that they cannot have a child, that she could have had a child if it made him happy, but that there are miles of difference between _wanting him to be happy_ and using a baby, an actual human _child_ , as a tool to do so. He turns away, stares at the kitchen, works his jaw. She takes a shuddering breath, lifts her fist to her mouth again, lets it drop. "And you, you never wanted this either," she says, trying not to be angry, trying not to be hurt, trying not to imagine him with their son on his knee, watching her on the afternoon broadcast. "You just —" Imagined you did. Thought you did. Wrote a whole beautiful fairy tale to replace the reality.

"Don't tell me what I want or don't want," he says, his voice taut and strangely void of emotion. "Okay? Robin? Don't tell me that I want something or I don't want something or I am something or I am _not_ something, like I'm — wrong, like I'm _confused_ , like I'm twelve years old and don't know what I think, like I'm _lying_! Okay? Robin? _Okay_?"

"And what about you, huh?" she retorts, sniffling loudly, pathetically. "Assuming me and Ted get together and talk shit out of you, and you said, you _promised_ , that this wasn't an issue for you! That you didn't want kids! You _swore_ to me that you didn't ever —"

"I wasn't lying!" he says desperately, turning back to her, and it makes her heart ache, too, how seriously he takes their vows. "I want to — I don't want _to have kids_ , if this had never happened I wouldn't have cared,"

"So, what, this is _my_ fault?" she can't help but snap. " _You_ stopped using condoms!"

"You stopped taking the pill!" he retorts, pointing, making a cutting, _forget it_ gesture: "And I want this kid, I want _this_ kid with _you_ , no matter what you think I'm _actually_ thinking!"

With a sinking heart, she believes him. And that's even worse. This isn't the right time. This isn't _right_. She can't have this baby, not like this, not _now_ , not when they talk to Ted and Tracy and Lily and Marshall and anyone but one another when they're scared. And what if she never gets pregnant again? Now that he's taken back his promise, now that this is an issue, now that —

And she realises, and everything goes cold and still inside her. He never gave her an answer. "Are you happy or not?" she demands shakily. She's going to throw up, she's going to fall over if she moves, her heart is going to stop beating, her lungs will stop drawing air. "Are — are you happy with me, or not?" Her mind makes a wild, free association: Nicaragua. A video tape, a thousand years ago. He'd tried to go there in his twenties. With Shannon, before she dumped him. He should stop taking girls to Nicaragua, Robin thinks wildly, almost wanting to laugh from the terribleness of this and everything else. "Why aren't you answering me?" she asks, and immediately regrets it, because she knows the reason, there's only one it can be, and a baby won't fix this.

"Of course I'm happy with you," he says, his eyes wide and scared and so thunder-struck that it fills her veins. "I love you. I love you _because_ I'm happy with you," he clarifies, frowning vaguely up above his head like he's trying to figure out what to say; "I… shit, Robin, right now I'm kinda mad at you and not super happy with you, but I love you and, if you got up and, walked out and, left…" he looks past her, towards the door, his stuttering confusion falling into him seeing it, imagining it, "I think I'd probably never be happy again," he says, simply, without fanfare or dramatics or a self-depreciating laugh. "I just want to be around you all the time."

Her heart twists at the pressure, at his heart in her hands, responsibility for his happiness and her happiness and their future, but her heart beats again, too, blood filling her veins. She can work with pressure. "I want to be around you all the time, too," she says, wishing she had a more meaningful, a more eloquent thing to say than just echoing her husband's words. She stands up shakily, light headed, her head spinning, and she doesn't quite stagger but sways a little. She hears footsteps and all at once his arms are around her, his hand, his face, pressed against her hair. "I love you," she says, because she realises she hasn't today, and he pulls her closer, and she wraps her arms around him tight.

He sighs in her ear. "I want to be with you all the time," he says again.

It's not all on him. "I know I haven't… been around," she admits, quietly, pressing herself into the crook of his neck, some reptile brain part of her liking the feeling of being so enveloped by him. It's easier, this close; it's easier, to feel him all around her but not have to see his reactions. "I mean, I didn't know. I didn't think. But I had so much fun with you in Nicaragua, I always have fun with you. I just — I just assumed you were always around, when _I_ was free, like — like those were the only times you existed."

She feels awful, every inch of her. Her face sticky and damp, her heart fast and irregular, her stomach twisting in pain and nausea, her lower back and shoulders thrumming with tension and pain, the guilt in her throat and mouth like bile, staining his shirt collar with mascara and counting his heartbeats. Waiting for him to speak. And she's still angry, just as he is, but she wants this, too: the warmth and heaviness of his body, the unevenness of his breathing and heart, his arms strong around her and hand cupped around her head.

She waits for him to speak, to yell again, but he stays silent, and she wonders what he's thinking. "And — a baby won't fix that," she says. "I have to fix that. I have to fix myself, and my work schedule."

"This isn't the right time for this," she says. She expects him to pull away, but he doesn't.

"We can't have this baby," she says, wondering why she's trying to start them back up. He still doesn't react. And she needs him to, even if it's round three, because she needs him to be with her on this. What if he can't be? What if he really, truly needs a kid? She can't find out later, she can't make up with him and have it all fall apart in a month or a year.

"Barney?" Her voice going high. Why isn't he saying anything?

"Okay," he says.

"Okay?" She pulls away. His hands drop to her waist. He looks tired, he looks sad, he looks his age. She searches for resentment, anger, disgust. He just looks resigned. Not happy, but maybe happiness would be a lie.

His mouth twitches in a hollow attempt at a smile. "Okay." He scrubs one of his hands over his face. "It's… okay."

"Okay." _So, you're saying it's okay? Okay? Okay!,_ she thinks inanely, and she can tell that Barney is having the exact same thought. His eyes crinkle up and she laughs weakly, kneads her knuckles into the base of her spine, and she's just so worn out, and her head is still spinning.

"Can we just," she says vaguely, "not have any more emotions for today?" She's not even finished with the sentence before Barney's phone begins to ring. He's changed the ringtone back to _Let's Go To the Mall_ , she notes distantly. He looks from her to it, and lets go of her slowly, reluctantly, leaving her standing on her own. She rests her hand on the island counter. He crosses the room and answers his phone.

She needs to lie down.

She should get her phone, make a doctor's appointment. Instead, she wanders into their bedroom, collapses heavily onto the bed. Curls her legs and uncurls them, tries to find a comfortable position and ends up on her stomach. Barney comes to find her a few minutes later, turning his phone in his hands, staying in the doorway. "That was Agent Ross," he says. Tosses the phone from one hand to another. "Um, Frank Price agreed to give a statement, and I worked a lot with him so they want me there to corroborate." She vaguely recognises the name as one of the VPs Barney worked with, pretended to work with, back when he was managing AtruCell's illegal activities.

She understands the unasked question. "Yeah, you should go," she says.

"No, I can stay — I want to stay here." He grips his phone tightly. "With you. Or, we could go together; I can get us a room at the Watergate."

"No, seriously, it's fine," Robin says. It's not, not really, but after all the abandoning him _she's_ done, maybe it's what she has coming. She keeps her voice flat, suppresses the nastiness that tries to creep back. "Go."

"I'd be back late tomorrow," he says cautiously. " _We_ could be back late tomorrow."

She has work tomorrow, she doesn't say, and an idea of what to do when she's there. She has a doctor's appointment to make. Maybe that will be best done out of Barney's earshot. Maybe a day to cool down would be good. She'll make the appointment for this weekend. " _Go._ Go be a badass FBI agent, Stinson."

"Okay," he says, hesitates. Robin's getting kind of sick of that word. She rolls herself onto her back, and he crosses the room to kiss her, deep and slow, pulls away, kisses her again. "I love you."

"I love you too," she says, too exhausted, too _weary_ , for anything more. He smiles, a real one, and climbs up off the bed. She hears him go to the closet to pack a change of clothes, but falls asleep, her body aching, before he even gets out the door.


	6. All In

_there is a fbi headquarters in nyc, but i figure a) altrucell/gnb must be a HUGE national case, thus justifying it being handled in DC, and b) barney, if given the option, will ALWAYS take the international-businessman-on-a-plane route._

 _caveat number two: i'm not an expert in a lot of this stuff i mentioned, but i did do some cursory research._

 _anyway._

 _this chapter actually got so big i had to split it up into two! and it's still pretty huge so, you know, whoops._

* * *

 **J. Edgar Hoover Building, Washington D.C.**

 **Wednesday, August 19th.**

* * *

 _falling to the ground,_

* * *

Barney pours the rest of the M&Ms out of the pouch and onto the table. Using two fingers, he divides the candies by colour, and then eats them, starting with brown and working his way to green.

He's also reading Frank Price's eight page statement and Agent Ross's seventy-five page report about it. There's something surreal in reading about events he experienced, events he was physically there for, in the third person. Thinking, _oh, the 'individual' was me_ , or _oh, I'm the one who wrote that contract_. It's not going super great.

It's usually fun, reading about how awesome he is, pretending it's chapter one of his autobiography, but he can't concentrate. He's supposed to be looking for holes in both the confession and the statement, filling in any days or references that either Frank or Ross missed, but Barney can barely pay attention. He pops the last few candies in his mouth and checks his phone for texts or messages. Throws the M&Ms pouch in the waste bin, where it lands among its brothers. He should never have come out to Washington. He should have taken an earlier flight back.

He'd arrived in DC last night, just in time for dinner: sandwiches with Agent Ross, a briefing, and a hotel room. He'd called Robin. She'd insisted she was fine, they were fine. Forgive and forget. It never happened. He'd left Ted a voice mail, hadn't known what to say, rambled a little bit about the dong-ness of DC monuments, and hung up. _Sorry for talking shit about you while arguing with my wife_. He'd lain in bed. He'd gone down to the bar. He'd texted Robin. He'd tried to sleep. He called James. The hotel bed sucked. He'd slept.

The interview had lasted six hours starting early this morning, and he'd mostly just been there for the intimidation factor, as a person for Ross to point to, contrast against Frank: good dog, bad dog. He'd never liked Frank, but he couldn't concentrate, left three times for bathroom breaks, to check his phone. Robin's left him a text the first time he goes: _it's fine_. The third break gave him a second text: _no_. _i took an early day. going to meet up with lily._ After that, nothing. Another briefing after the confession, and then it was just paperwork.

He could have left after that; had the paperwork e-mailed to him, flown back to Manhattan. He should have. But Robin hasn't texted him back.

He scrapes his chair back from his desk with the intent of making another trip to the vending machine down the hall, his seventh or eighth of the day.

His desk — borrowed, Barney doesn't _actually_ have a permanent desk in the J Edgar Hoover building, even though that would be _awesome_ — is in a quiet corner, but not its own room: all around him, people are quietly working, quietly talking into phones, quietly wearing suits and defending America. His kind of place. As uneasy as he feels, he can't help but saunter a little bit through the room in search of more to eat, wanting to impress the agents around him with his cool undercover work. Because he is cool. He's _awesome_.

As though acting awesome summons awesomeness forth, he feels his phone vibrate in his hand. He whips it up, the knuckle of his thumb hitting his ear in his haste to accept and answer. "Robin?" He's a little loud, his voice is a little high; several people around him give disapproving glances. He quickens his pace, eager to get to the hallway with vending machines and privacy.

He goes three steps before he gets an answer, but it isn't Robin.

"Barney?" says Lily.

"Oh, hey Lil!" three more steps; he halts to allow a frumpy woman to pass him. "Robin said you guys were going to meet up! Are you doing anything fun? Are you shopping? Is she mad at me? Hah, just kidding, why would Robin be mad at me! Is she?"

"Barney," Lily says, and he hears the waver in her voice: "Barney, something happened," and things seem to slow down. Something flits through his head — the fight, Robin, no new messages — he walks five more steps towards the door. "We're at Lenox Hill," Lily says, naming a hospital close to his and Robin's place, and he thinks as far as _and Robin's_ and everything kind of shuts down: _place_ , everything is far away, he can barely hear, why is Lily speaking so damn quietly?

What happened? he asks. The only thing he's aware of is that he isn't moving. He realises he didn't actually say anything. Why does her voice sound like that? Someone is standing in front of him and saying something, but he can't hear them. Lil, why aren't you answering me? He isn't sure if he said that aloud, either. Why is —

"I called an ambulance, she just _collapsed_ , and I couldn't get her to wake up, we just got to the hospital—" Lil, why are you crying? What's going on? Okay, he says, but he's not sure about that.

His ears are ringing. On autopilot, his eyes unfocused, he hangs up the phone. Tucks it neatly into his jacket. Runs his hands over his suit to straighten it. "Oh, am I in the way?" he asks the man glaring at him; Barney is standing in a doorway, and blocking all traffic in or out. "Sorry. I have to go." Why is he in a doorway?

Where is he? Why is Robin at Lenox Hill? What does collapsed mean? Where is he? How does he get back to New York, how does he get home, where _the hell_ is he, what's — he has to get back, how does he get back, how does he get back to Robin, why is he here, why did he ever come here, where the hell _is_ here, he has to get back —

It's in fragments: He's at the bottom of a stairwell. Now he's on a sidewalk outside, in the sticky August heat. Now he's looking for the airport. Now he's moving down the street. Now he's going back, now he's going back, now he's —

Now he's —

His phone is ringing, and it pulls him out of his daze just enough that he realises he has no idea where he is. He sees a park. And a building with columns. And a street. Airport, he's looking for the _airport_.

He answers the phone, but is unable to speak, unable to make a sound. "Barney?" It's Ted; Ted, sounding frantic and worried and why the hell is he frantic and worried; what _happened_ , what does _collapsed_ mean, Ted, is it Robin? Ted, you have to tell me, you have to tell me what happened — "Barney Stinson, you listen to me, and you listen _good_ ," says Ted, his voice so sharp that it cuts through the fog. "You're going to drink some water and you are going to calm down and get back to New York. You are going to stay on the phone and talk to me the entire time, got it? Here is what you are _not_ going to do: hang up in a panic, and get hit by a bus."

He makes a kind of croaking noise that might have been a laugh. "Got it," he says weakly. He takes a tentative step and doesn't immediately fall over; then a second, then a third. Where is he? He's standing on a sidewalk. There are people around. His head is spinning.

"You still there?"

"What's going on?" he manages to ask, pull out of the endless chorus in his head. There's a food cart up ahead and he staggers toward it, cutting to the front of the line, ahead of all the dads and moms and kids on vacation, grabs a bottle of water and throws down a couple of twenties before the owner or customers can say anything. He holds his phone between his ear and his shoulder to unscrew the top.

"I'm on the train with Penny," says Ted, and Barney squeezes the bottle so tight some water spills onto his hands; he doesn't care about that, he doesn't give a _shit_ about that, he stumbles towards a fence — there's a fence, he's on a sidewalk bordering a park, _progress_ , he is like seventy percent closer to knowing where he is: he leans against it with all his weight. "Lily called me when you hung up on her. Lil was visiting her at your place, with Marvin and Daisy. I was going to meet up with them with Penny at the Central Park Zoo, it's a great day for it. I wanted Penny to see the sea lions." Ted stops; seems to realise he's rambling. Barney takes a big gulp of water and focuses on standing upright. He can't tell if the water is warm or cold. He can't feel his feet, his hands, his heart, his lungs. The phone is the only thing he has. "We're passing through Harlem now. Lily is at the hospital with Robin. She fainted, but she's _fine_. Are you still there?"

"Ted, she's ten weeks pregnant." He pours the rest of the water over his head, through his hair and face and into the linen of his suit. It's freezing cold.

* * *

 **Lenox Hill Hospital, Manhattan.**

 **Wednesday, August 19th.**

* * *

 _i was anxious to be found._

* * *

In the years that followed, that trip from Washington to New York remained a blur, some of the worst hours of his life. Ted hangs up to call Lily, then calls him right back: He and Ted on the phone, like some sick game of Marco Polo: _you there?_ and _yeah_. Ted arriving at the hospital, narrating his every step, asking questions and repeating the answers to nurses.

 _Has she had any bleeding or spotting?_ I don't know.

 _When was her last period?_ I don't know.

 _Has she mentioned any pain or cramping_? Her back, her back hurts, she kept touching it, _I don't know_.

He knows Ted is asking on behalf of nurses, doctors, but telling it to him, his voice in Barney's ear, makes him feel guiltier with every answer; he _doesn't_ know, he doesn't, was he supposed to? Should he? Ted giving him what information he can: _It doesn't seem like she's bleeding. They're giving her an ultrasound. They kicked us out of the room. She's okay, I swear, Barney, she's going to be fine_. He has to hang up when the commuter plane takes off, and spends the flight with his fingers pressing into his forehead. What else did he miss? What else does he not know?

He pushes his phone on the second the wheels hit the tarmac an hour later, staring through his window as if he can see straight LaGuardia to Lenox Hill. Ranjit is waiting at at the terminal with his car. He isn't sure if he remembers to say hello. Calls Ted back; Ted answers on the first ring. _They're giving her blood. I don't know. She's stable._

"Tell the doctors you're family," he says. "Marshall can get you medical POA."

"We tried."

He feels blurry again, far and away, looking out the car window without taking it in. If Ranjit says anything, he doesn't hear it. He keeps the phone pressed to his ear, but aside from a couple of words every now and then ( _you there? yeah)_ , Ted no longer has news to share, questions to ask. They breathe in one another's ears.

"I see the hospital," Barney says after what seems like ten years; what must have been ten years.

"Don't hang up," says Ted. "No making a run for the doors."

"No buses," he agrees.

He makes it out of the car — can't remember if he ever did say anything to Ranjit — and into the hospital. He's so intent on making it to the elevators that he doesn't notice anyone until someone says "Barney!" and oh, hey, it's Lily, and she throws her arms around his neck in a hug and he bends and hugs her too and she's soft and nice and _Lily_ , and he just wants to cling on. But he can't. _Robin_. "Barney, I'm so sorry, I'm so glad you made it," Lily is saying.

"Did something happen?" He pulls away from her. Elevators. Robin.

She stops him with a hand on his arm. "They, they won't tell us anything but — hang on," she says, inhaling a deep breath, and she grabs the phone from his hand (his fingers feel strange, no longer clasped around it) and presses it to her ear. "Ted? We're good, I got him," and she hangs up and gives it back to him. He keeps trying to move towards the elevators, but Lily stands in his way, puts her hands on his arms, he could break away but why is she trying to block him? What happened? Lily looks him in the eye, and he sees her eyes are round and red and he hears her voice shake. "I, I'm sorry, I think she lost the baby."

Oh. And? _And_ , that's his first thought, and he's aware of images shifting, the future changing, arguments and lollipops and China, Morocco, Spain — yes, all that, but none of it matters, why is she looking at him like it does? _Robin_ , how is _Robin_ , what is happening to _Robin_ , and then he thinks of the baby, the pregnancy, _it'd be a high risk pregnancy_ , Robin said, and he reels, except all that flashes through his mind is her, her, her. "Get out of my way," he says roughly, and then they're in the elevator, and somehow Lily is holding his hand. He squeezes her fingers. He feels her thumb stroke his. _She lost the baby,_ he thinks. Lily is talking, he's dimly aware, telling him about the past few hours: Robin complaining of pain, taking care of something at work and then wanting to hang out, the obsessive rubbing of her back. She'd seemed woozy, holding Daisy. Had placed her carefully on the armchair, then sat heavily on the couch. She hadn't collapsed all at once, but faded out, her skin cold to the touch.

He only half listens, slipping out of the elevator, away from her hand, as soon as it dings open. He sees Tracy sitting by an empty stroller in the waiting room; Tracy turns and starts towards him; Barney ignores her, steps around her, _later_ , time for that later — there's Ted in a chair, starting to rise; _later_ , he doesn't see Marshall or the kids ( _later_ ), there's Lily hurrying after him _(later_ ). He doesn't know where Robin's room is, but there's one main hall off the waiting room, and he hurries down it, fully prepared to open every door until he finds the correct one.

There's a nurse walking down the hall in his direction; he makes a beeline towards her. Her name tag says _Maria_. "Hi, Maria," he says, his voice calm and charming and everything he isn't, right now: years of practice, muscle memory, he smiles but his eyes search the hall, just in case somewhere is a sign reading _Robin Here_. He sees a sign that says _OBSTETRICS_. "I'm looking for Robin. For my wife. Robin Scherbatsky. I just got off a plane from Washington; can you help me, Maria?"

He's aware that Ted is standing beside him; he must have followed him from the waiting room. Ted puts his hand on Barney's arm; Barney shakes him off.

"Are you the husband?" Maria asks, looking from him to Ted. Barney is suddenly aware that he's still gripping his phone in his hand. He puts it in his pants pocket; pulls his wallet out of his suit. It's all very smooth, very automatic, his movements belonging to another man.

"Yeah, he is," Ted is saying, patting Barney on the back, rambling out of nerves: "they've been married for two years, can you believe it? _I_ could barely believe it, and I was there. I was the best man. _Joint_ best man, actually —"

"Ted, stop talking," Barney says pleasantly, showing Maria his driver's license. He'd only changed his last name to impress Robin, win some points, prove something vague and ill-defined, that he could change anything he liked if it was for her. He'd gotten laid off it a lot, too, which helped. He's never been more glad that they share a surname.

Maria gives it a cursory glance. "I'll get Doctor Simonds." She hurries off.

"Is Doctor Simonds a chick or a dude?" Barney asks, watching the nurse depart.

"Woman." says Ted, running his hand over his face. Then he and Ted are hugging. "You made it," Ted says.

"Where's her room?"

Ted hurries to take him. "They kicked us to the waiting room because we wouldn't leave," he explains. "You just missed Marshall, he's taking the kids to get some air, they were getting antsy." It's really hard to care about any of that stuff. "Right here," says Ted. He hesitates at the closed door, but Barney opens it.

He knows Lenox Hill has a reputation for being kind of ritzy; this room is not. Uncomfortable, plasticy sofa, bright lights, bad view out the window. An empty hospital bed. "Where is she?" he asks. Ted is gaping beside him. "Ted, where's Robin?"

Ted shakes his head, "I don't —"

"Mr Scherbatsky-Stinson?" Maria's back, with an older woman in a lab coat Barney assumes is Dr Simonds. She steps back as the doctor enters the room; leaves.

"Stinson," he corrects; usually would make a joke, _i go by my maiden name_ ; he steps towards Dr Simonds. "Where's Robin?" He points at the empty hospital bed. Not here. Where?

Dr Simons offers her hand to shake, and he does. She's holding a file. He wonders what it says. "Mr Stinson, I'm so glad you've made it. Mr Mosby and your friends have been able to provide us with a lot of your wife's medical history, but —"

"Where is she?" Barney interrupts.

"Could I speak to you privately?"

Ted starts to leave, but Barney interrupts. "Ted's family. Where is she?" Maybe if he keeps asking, he'll get an answer. Where is she? Did something happen? Is she —

Dr Simonds steers them over to the plasticy sofa. Barney sits heavily on it. It creaks. Ted leans against the hospital bed, his arms crossed, fingers tapping on his elbows. "Your wife has had a severe placental abruption," the doctor says. "The placenta detached from the uterine wall. This likely began last night or this morning. There was no external bleeding; she bled _into_ the placenta. We gave her blood and determined the severity of the detachment with an ultrasound, and were forced to take action."

"Where's Robin?" he asks again. Why can't he get an answer? Why won't the doctor just _tell_ him? Can't she see that's all he cares about right now? He sees her rubbing her back, imagines her bleeding. Kissing her on their bed, as blood pools inside her. He clasps his hands together between his knees, squeezes. Sees Ted, pale and distressed.

"She's been moved to another room so we can proceed with the removal of the foetus and placenta, while additionally stopping the bleed." Dr Simonds says. "The procedure will last another hour and a half."

"Wait," Ted croaks. "You're just… giving her a…" He raises his eyebrows, nods meaningfully, looks horrified and sick.

The doctor looks from Barney to Ted and back again. "At this stage of the pregnancy, the foetus was not viable, and our priority had to be on the health and safety of your wife," she says, carefully addressing Barney as if he was the one who asked. "Unfortunately, given the severity of the detachment, she was beginning to haemorrhage, and we had to take immediate action." Just like that, he thinks. It was all for nothing. Everything they said, thought, everything from the past few days: nothing. _High risk pregnancy_ , she'd said. High risk. He feels numb, cold, different from the foggy numbness but no less distant. Nothing seems to matter right now. He's aware of everything, but it's stopped being important.

"It's fine," he says. "We were going to get rid of it anyway." He almost says _she was._ He's aware of Ted's look and ignores it. "Saves us the trouble, right?" he laughs hollowly. "Where is she?"

"Unfortunately, you can't see her until after the procedure is completed, but it's a routine procedure with very low risk," says the doctor. "But in the meanwhile, if you're up for it, I do have some questions for you that your friends were unable to answer."

"Sure." It's fine, whatever. He could have stayed home with the baby. They could have travelled the world on maternity leave. They could have bought a cabin in Vermont. He could have become a consultant for the FBI and Robin could have worked and they could have had a son and a dog. Eight signs from the universe saying yes. One saying no. _This isn't the right time_ , said Robin. Had she known? That the pain in her back was her body agreeing with her? That there was blood pooling in her belly?

"When did you discover your wife was pregnant?"

"Two days ago," he says, his head starting to pound. "Both of us. She had a blood test at the doctor's or something. I don't know." _I don't know_. Is there anything he knows?

"Doctor…?"

"Malovich. On east seventy-third."

"Has your wife ever been pregnant before?"

"She thought she couldn't get pregnant." He wonders what Dr Simonds's first name is. He wonders why she keeps calling Robin _his wife_ , instead of using her name. This doesn't feel real. Wasn't he in DC just a minute ago? Maybe Ted never called him. Maybe he did get hit by a bus, and this is a dream, his life flashing before his eyes, except what kind of a sick dream is it? It should be better than this, if so. He doesn't feel much of anything.

"We took an ultrasound," the doctor says, opening her file.

"Okay."

"She has a uterine scarring here, and here." Doctor Simonds points on the ultrasound image, but Barney doesn't bother looking. He watches Ted lean forward, sneak a peek over the top. The doctor shifts the photos so Ted can see them more clearly.

"What does that mean?" Ted asks.

"Often, this type of scarring is caused by D&C procedures after abortion or miscarriage."

It takes a moment. Ted asking questions: _can you tell how long the scarring has been there_? _she's never been pregnant so how_ — Doctor Simonds talking: he hears words like _irregular menstrual cycles_ and _can lead to infertility_ and _can occur naturally in some_ and _blah blah blah blah_. And them talking about it, like it's a normal thing, like it's an okay thing to say, like — like things he can't think of right now, he can't _think_ , he should go find some more water, he should call Lily back, he hung up on her earlier, in the third page of Frank Price's deposition he misquoted some figures on the GNB merger, he needs to call Agent Ross and tell him so, and he has to, and he needs to, and now he's —

Doctor Simonds is looking at him. Ted is looking at him. He looks at Ted. "You okay, buddy?" Ted asks.

"I was drifting," he says, in that bland, calm voice. "Sorry, did someone ask me something?" He smiles. Adjusts his shirtcuffs.

"As I was saying," says Doctor Simonds, and he tries to listen, pay attention. There's a little painting hanging on the wall over her shoulder, next to the empty hospital bed. A vase and a couple of uninspiring pansies. He wonders who paints them, if the hospital contracts out to someone or if there's a bleak painting warehouse somewhere. Then again, maybe it's supposed to be cheerful. This would normally be the room where a woman has a baby and her husband and loved ones are there and everyone is happy and excited and things are going to be great from now on and —

Ted's foot shoots out, connects with his shin. Barney flinches. _Drifting again_ , Ted says telepathically.

 _I can't do this_.

 _Hang on for just another minute, okay? I know this is tough._

"—resulting in the scarring. Is your wife's period often irregular?"

He looks out the window. It's getting dark, he can see into the building across the alley. He looks at the painting. He looks at Ted. He looks at his watch. "She complains about it sometimes, because she always used to be on time, but…" His cell phone is in his hands. He checks for texts. He has twenty: Lily, Marshall, Tracy, unnoticed on his long commute home. None from Robin. He checks again. "…but since she stopped taking the pill, she complains that…"

That it's irregular. She'll be a week or two late, bad cramping, he's stuck half avoiding her and half at her beck and call; she gets grouchy and it's _gross_ , okay, and it makes sex difficult, and it's irregular, and she complains because when she was on birth control it was always exactly on time, the pills must have messed with her hormones, she stopped taking birth control, he stopped using birth control, they stopped. _Has your wife ever been pregnant before_?

None of Ted's telepathy can help anymore.

He stands up from the sofa. He can't hear anything, he can't look at anything, he's out the door. Left to the waiting room, he goes right. Hands in his pockets. _Hi, Maria_ , when he passes her, his face stretching into a smile, he winks, she says something, he sees her lips move. He needs: Air. Cigarettes. Outside. A television. A drink. Water. The East River. Water. A drink. Scotch. Cigarettes. Something to shatter and break. A drink. Girls, sex, thudding bass, the river at night, a dare or a challenge or a distraction in heels and a low top; things to go back to when they didn't matter, when nothing he did mattered, when he was nothing and everyone knew he was nothing and there was nothing in him to break — Not like now; now he's —

Now he's…

Now he's outside.

Now he's outside and there's his lighter clenched in his fist and a pack of cigarettes crushed in his fist and he's calm again, his movements smooth, as he curls open his fingers and hits the bottom of the pack and extracts a bent cigarette, brings it to his lips and lights it.

By the time he's finished his cigarette, he's feeling fine, back to normal. He decides to go back inside. He seems to be in an alley: there's a door, but it's locked when he tries it. He leaves the alley and goes around the block to one of the hospital's official entrances. He sees Marshall crammed into one of the tiny chairs in the lobby, moving a stroller back in forth with one hand.

"Hey, Marshall!" Barney says. "Check it, I found a dumpster full of medical stuff! Wanna go through it with me?"

"Barney, where have you been?" Marshall wedges himself out of the chair, his eyes wide and concerned. "We've all been calling you."

"That explains why I have _Let's Go to the Mall_ stuck in my head." Barney crouches in front of the stroller. Daisy is ninety percent asleep, her chin lolling onto her chest and cheeks chubby and red. For a second he almost has a feeling, but then it stops. "Dude! Someone's getting chubby!"

"Oh, don't," says Marshall, "I _just_ got her to fall asleep, come on."

He pouts and jiggles the stroller a little to appease Marshall, climbing back to his feet. "Fiiine. It's so hot out," he says, pulling at his shirt collar. "Almost too hot to go and check out that pile of medical refuse! Marshall! In or out?"

"What's wrong with you?"

"Yeah, you're right, it's probably a biohazard. Wanna take the kids to Chuck-E-Cheez? The one uptown banned me, but there's one in Queens!"

"Normally, yes, I'd love to go to Chuck-E-Cheez," says Marshall. "But seriously, dude, what's the matter? You're acting…"

"Fine," he says. "I'll ask Lily."

The others are in the waiting room in Obstetrics, positioned in a loose, worried circle. Lily bouncing Marvin on her leg; Penny dozing against Tracy's shoulder. Marshall trails behind him with Daisy; sits down next to Lily. They're all staring at him. Ted has a legal pad in his lap. "Oh, awesome, can I borrow that?" Barney says, heading right over: they all look concerned and surprised and he hears his name two or three times, grabs the notebook out of Ted's hands and pulls a pen from his coat.

The top half of the page is covered in notes and lists of words. He sees _preeclampsia_ and _abruption_ and stops paying it any attention; flips to an empty page and collapses in one of the chairs. "How young is too young for Laser-Tag," he says, pointing his pen at the gang. "Discuss!"

They're all looking at him. "As long as the vest fits, _they're_ fit," he says, with the intent on starting the discussion. "Penny? Nah. Daisy? Probably not, although she's kinda tubby. Marv? _Definitely_. I can take him with me and Eli and Sadie next week! Good plan!" He writes down: _call James_. Looks up; they're still just looking at him, glancing from him to one another and having a whole telepathic dialogue, he can tell, and he almost feels something again but stops. "Come _on_ , guys!"

"Barney, you vanished for an hour and now you're acting…" Tracy trails off. "Are you okay?"

"I'm awesome," he says.

"I know it wasn't easy with doctor Simonds," Ted starts to say, and he tunes him out.

Lily rises from her seat, moves to one next to Barney, rubs his bicep. "Hey, Marshall, your wife's copping a feel," he says, and writes _laser-tag, chuck-e-cheez, central park zoo,_ and _fun station usa_. Lily doesn't so much as whack him.

"I get it, you're disassociating," she says in a low voice as he writes, like they're having a private conversation and their friends aren't all listening in. But the joke is on her, because he's not. "But this is real, okay? And we're all here for you and Robin."

"We are fully prepared to sleep in these crappy waiting room chairs tonight," Marshall adds. "I've already called in sick to work tomorrow."

Robin, he thinks. He tries to come up with a fifth item for his list. She's lying on their bed and shifts to her back when she sees him. Her fingers curling around his ear. Her fingers were cold. _I did my best_ , he thinks. _But that's not very good_. It's never going to be very good. He didn't know anything.

"Awesome international vacation spots, discuss!" he says, because he can't take these reassurances, these somber looks, Lily's hand on his arm. He starts a new list: _Belize, Canada, Italy_ , _Nicaragua_. He thinks about China and Spain and all the other countries he'd tried to talk her into visiting, places they haven't yet been together: _Netherlands, Korea, Mexico, Egypt, Argentina, Peru, Thailand, Austria, Finland, Seychelles, Singapore_ — he taps his pen on the paper and leaves a blot of ink.

He looks at them and they look back and finally Ted licks his lips. "Florence," he says, "is one of the most architecturally interesting cities in the world."

Marshall lets out a breath. "Italy was great. And remember how great Scotland was?"

"I have a great uncle who retired to Barbados," Tracy hazards.

He writes them all down. They start to discuss: if you could go on a vacation right now, where would you go; where the first Eriksen family vacation should take place; whether Rome was that already. Where Ted and Tracy should honeymoon when they finally get hitched. Countries that seem overrated. Countries that seem underrated. Barney writes and writes and writes, listing countries and cities and landmarks and states, making plans and thinking calendars and scheduling dates in his head, waiting but not waiting and thinking but refusing to think.

They've just finished Top Five Tourist Attractions in New York not Swamped With Actual Tourists when Nurse Maria comes to find them, and the conversation ("No, seriously, people are saying Queens is the new tourist hot spot") sputters to a complete halt as if someone had flipped a switch. Four pairs of eyes look up at her. Barney writes _Queens is not a tourist attraction_ on his legal pad.

"Mr Stinson?" Maria asks, taking in the adults and the sleeping toddlers and the vending machine detritus surrounding them. He's forced to look up at her, his leg jiggering uncontrollably. "Your wife is in recovery. You can see her now."

* * *

 _you can always go home,_

 _to the safety of your cloud._


	7. Nicaragua

_i feel kind of badly that i haven't been able to use the rest of the gang all that much… but b and r have always done much better on their own than with others around them. especially when it comes to heavy stuff. plus tbh the chapter would likely be_ even longer _if so._

 _incidentally, the lyrics and name of this 'fic all come from_ Museum of Flight _by Damien Jurado. you might recognise it from the show itself;_ _it plays at the end of_ The Pre-Nup.

* * *

 **Lenox Hill Hospital, Manhattan.**

 **Wednesday, August 19th.**

* * *

 _i turned around,_

* * *

She hears her ears ringing, Daisy's chattering fading out, and thinks _I'm going to faint_. Daisy doesn't want to be put down and clings to Robin. She pulls her chubby hands off her and Daisy, startled, cries. Lily asks _Robin, what's going_ —

Then nothing.

Everything is heavy, and there's a funny sort of pain. Robin is aware of it, thudding heavily in her belly, pressing down on her, but it seems far away. There's a familiar smell around her, and she pushes her eyes open, her vision crowded with black flowers and spots. There's Lily, talking to a woman. This isn't her apartment. Lil, what's… where's…

Next time she opens her eyes, Ted and Marshall tower over her. Aha, she thinks, jumping to a conclusion: I'm lying down? The pain is still there, crampy and thick. She's not sure how she got here, and her brain feels kind of soft and fuzzy… Ted is petting her hand. She wants to tell him to quit it, I'm not an invalid, Ted; where's…

She lying on a beach, but the beach is actually the East River. She's spread out on a towel next to an old tire and a man fishing. He keeps looking at her and she realises her period has come; she's bleeding all over her bikini. She wraps her towel around herself and hides from the fisherman in the WWN building, she hides in her office where no one will see, she draws the blinds against the faces, hands cupped to eyes and pressed to the glass, she hides under the desk in a ball because it hurts, it hurts, it hurts —

There's something heavy inside her, something dark she can almost visualise, a shard pushing itself through her gut, a needle twisting itself past her skull, heat blooming and curling with every beat of her heart, the painkillers washing over them like thin paint, white and filmy, the thing bleeding through. The lights press past her closed eyes; red and bright and pulsing, and she is standing in the living room, looking the setting sun gleaming orange and yellow on the building opposite, glinting and refracting in hundreds of windows, looking at him on the balcony, the way his shoulders hunched and the way his cigarette smoke curled pale and dusty in the glinting light. She stands inside and watches the shadow of his cigarette smoke brush over the floor, she stands inside his shadow and thinks about opening the door and kissing him in the too-bright sunlight and smoke, and she turns back to the sofa and turns on CNN.

She thinks about…

She —

 _Mrs Scherbatsky_? She opens her eyes. They're so heavy, thick; she can't seem to focus her gaze. A woman with greying hair is leaning over her. _Are you back with us_? There's a pinch at the base of her skull, a taut feeling, like her brain is on a string being yanked and tugged; everything else is blurry and distant and aches. She moves her hand. She wriggles her toes. She tries to say _I don't like being called missus_ , but her mouth is dry and woodsy and it comes out as a sort of cough.

My name is Doctor Simonds, says the greying woman. Robin makes another throat-clearing noise. Everything is becoming more solid around the edges, the ache settling into her gut and bones, but there's still a cotton-ball padding around the edges. She feels as though she took too much cough medicine. But she doesn't have a cold, she has a baby. "You were brought here this afternoon by your friend Lily," Doctor Simonds is saying, the world settling itself in bits and pieces, "How are you feeling?"

"Thirsty," she manages; the cracking of her lips her current concern. She's able to look around her a little, able to notice her surroundings now: what is very clearly a hospital room, Doctor Simonds with a clipboard and pen. She's in a hospital bed, raised slightly so she's almost sitting up, almost like she's lounging on the sofa back home. Robin's attention falls on the IVs at her bedside, a clear liquid and a red one, both connecting to her left arm. Something happened.

"We'll get you some ice," says the doctor. There's a nurse here, too, taking notes, updating Robin's chart, and the nurse shares a look with the other woman. Doctor Simonds reaches for and places her hand on Robin's hand. "You were brought here this afternoon by your friend Lily," she says.

Something happened. Robin nods and wishes she hadn't; her brain and vision seem to shift, bobbing up and down with the motion of her head like a boat on the sea; she feels nauseous and fuzzy again. "I fainted?" she guesses, her throat grating as she tries to speak.

"Why don't we talk about this with your husband present?" Doctor Simonds asks. Why doesn't she say _yes_? Robin remembers holding Daisy, remembers Daisy's hands pulling at her shirt and she has to break them free; thinks _she's not saying yes because_ — and doesn't let herself quite finish, but something hurts, deep in her belly and bones.

For moral support, Robin realises, and everything seems to twist up inside of her. She take a shaky breath that causes pain to twist in her lungs and gut; it hurts hot and sharp, but it's a distant, far-away feeling. Pain killers, the clear IV must be pain killers. Something happened. "He's in Washington."

"He's in the waiting room, with your friends," Doctor Simonds corrects gently. Something happened. He wouldn't have come here if she'd only fainted — but no, Robin knows that's not true. He would have dropped everything and rushed to New York if anyone had so much as implied she was — was what? Hurt? Sick? Something _happened_ , and there's an ache radiating hot through her gut and bones. She's overcome with a dizzy, bottomless urge to see him, for him to convince her that nothing is wrong, tell a joke and make her forget and tell her everything is alright — why isn't he here? Why did he come from Washington and stop at the waiting room? Something happened, but what if — what _if_ ; why did he stop? Why isn't he here? "As soon as we're done examining you, we'll send your friends in to see you," the doctor is saying, "but we can call your husband now if you'd like."

"I…" she says. Yes, send him in? No, don't? "Can you just tell me now?" She wants to see him. She can't see him. Something happened, and she needs to know _what_ , she needs to know — if she's okay, if he'll want to see her, if he…

"…Yes, of course," says doctor Simonds, and she shares another look with the silent nurse, and she's _judging_ her, and Robin's neck prickles, but she doesn't want to see him, she does want to but not _yet_ , not before she knows…

She tries to sit up further and her vision clouds and Robin abandons that plan, lies back and closes her eyes and decides to keep them closed; they're so heavy and maybe if she goes back to sleep this will just be another dream. The smell of disinfectant prickles at her nose. You're in recovery, the doctor is saying, and she's saying more, too; there was a procedure and Robin should ask but something happened and…

Simonds's voice slides far away; maybe she stops talking or maybe Robin just isn't listening; she understands, now, why Barney choses to drift through unpleasant conversations…

She is standing in the living room, and the sun…

"Robin?" That's Lily's voice. She blinks her eyes open and the room is bright and it's hard to focus her eyes; how did she ever fall asleep, her head spins and her muscles pinch; there's Lily frantic, rushing to sit at the edge of her bed: there's Marshall at her side, Daisy held in one arm and his hand enclosing Marvin's: there's Tracy with Penny, hanging back a step, smiling, worried: there's Ted, nearly tangling himself with her IV stand in his attempt to stand by her bed. It's too many people, too many faces, too many worried stares and too much open concern; Robin looks over all her friends, Lily holding her hand — "Oh my God, Robin, are you okay? Doctor Simonds said you should be fine, but you're so _pale_ …" Robin takes in a breath and tries to focus, but —

"Lily, I'm fine —" she says, but —

"Baby, give Robin room to breathe," Marshall says, letting to of Marvin to put his hand on Lily's shoulder. Robin looks at him —

Marvin stands on tip-toes to peer over the bed at her. "Aun' Robin is sick!" he offers. She tries to smile at her nephew —

Lily sniffles. "I'm so sorry! I didn't know what was going on until — until — I should have noticed! Will you ever forgive me?"

"Of course I…" she says, overwhelmed and dizzy, her mouth so dry and her heart racing, her pulse thudding in her veins, _LilyIloveyoubut_ — _but_ —

"It's no one's fault," Ted says in a bracing sort of voice, and now his hand is on her shoulder. She doesn't want his hand on her shoulder. She looks from one face to another to another, she nods and her head aches and she's not sure if she's agreeing with Ted or Marshall or promising Lily; everyone crowded around her, everyone but — "We're all here for you, Robin," Ted is saying, and Lily is nodding and holding her hand, and Marshall is solemn and tall, and Tracy is biting her lip, but —

He's standing at the foot of her bed. No: a foot back from that, away from the others, away from the bed, his own island far away. He's holding a legal pad and pen so loosely she can see them slip incrementally in his fingers. The others move and speak and bob and exist, flashing in and out of her peripheral vision. He's so still. He's so still and he looks at her, open and devastated and scared at the foot of her bed, and she can see every fear and heartbreak and answer in the way he looks at her, no walls or words, no strength in his hold, holding himself far away as Lily clutches her fingers and Ted speaks at her shoulder.

The way he holds himself back, again and again, and she knows it, just then, the answer: _come here_ , she tries to say, _please come here_. He looks at her, his eyes searching and liquid and scared, he turns his head just a little, looks away just a little, her heart shatters just a little, and he looks to Ted, Ted talking about fault and faultlessness and Robin and endurance and strength: _and no matter how hard it gets, you've always had that strength_. The paper slips in his hands. The pen clatters to the floor.

She can hear again, her heart is beating again, thready and frantic and wind rushes in her ears, and the bubble dissolves to film.

"Okay, seriously," says Tracy, jiggling Penny in her arms, "how about we all take a big step away from Robin before she suffocates?"

"Yeah, good plan," says Marshall, tugging at Lily's shoulder.

Lily wipes her eyes with the back of her hand and relinquishes her grip on Robin, asking, "are you sure you're okay, sweetie?"

 _No_ , she thinks: "I'm … thirsty," she says, because thirst is safe and her throat is hot and taut and cracking. "I'm sore." She presses herself against her pillows, closes her eyes and blinks them back open. "I'm… okay, though."

"Did… did the doctor talk to you about…?" Lily asks, in a strange whisper, as though if she's quiet no one will know. She's acutely aware that everyone knows; she feels as though it's tattooed on her body, the words pressing through her skin: _strength_ and _endurance_ and _but i couldn't do this_ , and she doesn't want to think or remember or _talk_ about it, talk about anything.

"Yeah," she says. "It's fine. I'm fine." She closes her eyes and forces them open again.

Tracy rubs her hand along Ted's arm, pulls him onto a green sofa beside the bed. Marshall gives Lily their daughter to hold, his hands on Lily's shoulders; large and comforting. Her husband bends to the floor to pick up his pen, and they're all watching, watching her, watching him, Marvin's fingers still curled on the railing of the bed, waiting for them to speak or touch. And now, now that they're watching, he's all movement: He puts the pen in his suit pocket, his movements fussy and precise. He flips through the pages of the legal pad. He clears his throat. She hates lying like this, liquid pumping into her veins, pain whenever she tries to move, pain whenever she looks at him, the way everyone is looking at them, full of worried expectation —

"I'm thirsty," she says again, because she _really is_ , and because it's a safe thing to want.

Barney starts; jabs his thumb over his shoulder and turns on his heel, "I'll go get —!"

"No," says Tracy pointedly. "How about we all except for Barney go get Robin some water?" She gives the others meaningful looks that are not subtle in the least. Marshall scoops up Marvin and pats Robin's hand; Tracy leads Ted by the elbow; Lily sniffles and keeps looking over her shoulder. Barney wavers, like he's thinking about following them; Ted pats him on the arm as he passes, and then it's just the two of them, Barney looking at the door.

The room is so quiet now. Soft, mechanical, hospital noises; the hum of air conditioners and vents. He stands so far away and looks at the door, and she wants to say something, wants him to say something, but she doesn't know what. She doesn't want to talk about it; _think_ about it. She wants it to go away, but she wants him to tell her everything will be alright, be the one to make the speech about how strong she is and actually make her believe it.

She doesn't want this distance.

He looks at her out of the corner of his eye; she watches his adam's apple bob. "Ten bucks says they're not coming back with water," he says, and she knows that he doesn't want to address it either. "Or… ever."

"Which sucks, because I'm crazy thirsty," she says, her voice hoarse, and Barney looks around; spots the door in the corner of the room. He strides over to it, it must be a bathroom, and there must be a sink. She hopes there are cups. She closes her eyes and doesn't open them. Hears him open cupboards and step back and forth, moving now, _acting_ now, but her mind keeps going back to him behind all their friends, open and defenceless and terrified.

"Um," he says, running the sink. "There aren't cups." She hears him moving slowly, his steps hesitant, out of the bathroom, the faucet still running; the sound of running water driving her insane. She opens her eyes and he's making his way towards her and the bed, frowning in concentration, his hands cupped and wet before him.

Something in her twists and aches, watching him walk towards her, dripping water. She sits up as best she can — it hurts; her head spins; her nerves pinch, her head feels tight — and he leans over her and lifts his hands and she drinks the water from his fingers, her right hand steadying his wrist and his ring glinting in the florescent lights. The water is warm and tastes a little mineral-y; it spills all down her front. He pulls his hands apart when they're empty, and she slides her hand down his wrist, holds his hand in hers, his thumb stroking her palm.

"Do you want me to get some more?" he asks, but he pushes himself onto the bed as he does, wedging himself next to the rail, she moves as far to the left as she can and for a moment he seems to try to twist himself, think about lying beside her, but there's not nearly enough room. His grip on her hand tightens. He's always been at his best when it's just them.

A few sips wasn't enough water, and he's practically sitting on her, his hip and thigh pressing against her side, the mattress dipping under his weight, the movements and the pressing of his body causing her back to ache and the hot cramping to intensify, like some angry disturbed creature, he smells like he's been smoking and she doesn't want him to move away, not for a second, not ever. She licks her lips; she shakes her head, she closes her eyes again.

They're quiet for a little while, and she knows she should say something, he should say something, but her mind shies and turns from any of those thoughts. The pain settles back down, like silt in water, present but no longer prodding through her skin, and he stays wedged beside her, holding her hand. She opens her eyes slowly and sees him looking down at their hands, the shadows under his eyes, the lines in the corners.

"I think you won your ten dollars," she says, because she doesn't want him to think about it any more than she does.

His eyes focus and he lifts his head to look at her, his lips curling. "After five minutes? You're giving up pretty quick on this one."

"Thank god for Tracy," she says.

He smiles; it doesn't reach his eyes. She follows his gaze as it lifts, as he looks at the IV stand, looks out the window, looks at a clock on the wall. It's almost eight, she realises with a thudding surprise. He looks back at her, his expression tight and wary, and she knows he wants to say something. She doesn't. She doesn't want to talk, she doesn't want to listen, she wants it light and she wants to not think about anything at all. "I told Tracy everything," he says, ignoring or closed off to her telepathy or pleading eyes. "The other day. Before lunch." He looks down at his watch. "But then we really _did_ talk about the Eurozone."

He vowed honesty, and he always gets there in the end. She takes as deep a breath as she can. "I sort of figured," she says, exhaling, and she forces the words out: "I told Ted we were thinking about adopting." It lies there, a few inches to the side of reality. She waits for him to say something, react or question her lie, point out that none of that matters, they all know everything now; more than everything, every last detail and fact. Doctor Simonds telling her what happened as though it all happened to someone else. Her body sore and aching. He doesn't say anything. His thumb keeps stroking her palm. "Are you mad?" she asks, and hates how quiet, how thin her voice sounds in her ears.

"Ted called and sat on the phone with me for two hours when I was losing it," he says simply, and he's smiling, a little bit, and it hurts her heart and fills her heart that he's still so happy whenever his best friend cares about him, and she's glad that instead of worrying over _her_ , Ted thought to call Barney instead. She could say _of course he did_ , allow the subject to be changed, talk about Ted and nothing else — and she wonders if that's what _he's_ doing, or if he somehow doesn't know.

"At me," she says, unable to look at him, mustering all her will to do so.

He's silent for what must only be a couple of seconds, what feels like years. "For telling Ted…?" He glances back at her. She forces herself not to look away. He shakes his head helplessly. "No."

"For … anything," she says, her breath catching; she tries to shrug her left shoulder and feels a tug from the IV lines, strange and uncomfortable, she breathes in through her nose and he mistakes it for pain, from the alarm on his face.

"No," he says again, sounding surprised more than certain, but he shifts his weight away from her and she wonders what that means. That he doesn't want to be near her? Or just that he's wedged himself into too small a space and is uncomfortable? He pulls his hand free of hers and she thinks of him standing away from the foot of the bed, all their friends between them. She watches him swallow.

He looks for something to do with his hands and twists the ring on his finger, and it might just be him fidgeting but maybe it isn't. She tries to think about it, and her mind veers away. But that's what they keep doing, that's what they always do, fly to Central America and change the subject, and she sees him pull away and she needs him so much. And she hates it. She hates needing him, wanting him pressed at her side, relying so much on another person's happiness that she can't bear to look into the shadows. How long has it been true? For how many years? He makes easy promises and easy vows and it takes him a little while but he keeps them, and she's so afraid that someday he'll stop — that if they think about it, if they talk about it, if she keeps letting him down, he'll see her clearly and see how disappointing she is — that she couldn't talk herself into doing something she didn't want for him for a _day_ , and couldn't even end it on her own terms. That she…

"I messed up," he says, all in a rush, pulling the words right out of her throat.

"No," she says automatically, not understanding what he means.

"No, let me talk," he says, looking away, moving his jaw, and it all comes out in a rush: "The doctor and Ted and everyone were asking me all these questions, and I didn't know. I didn't know anything, I didn't help at all, I don't know about you or about _periods_ or — or barfing, or taking care of people, or _anything_. I don't know how to do it. Maybe I _can't_ do it. Maybe I'll just always…" he takes a deep breath and swallows it down; clears his nose and keeps playing with his wedding ring. "I thought, I actually thought, I was good at this," he says with a scoff that hurts her heart. "But I'm not."

Standing away from the foot of the bed. The last one to enter the room.

"That's not true," she says weakly; that's not strong enough, she knows as she says it, but she doesn't know what is, because she know how to say what she means, that what he says isn't true, that he's twisting himself into knots over something so…

"When you were barfing, I went to go make us _drinks_ ," he says, and she remembers the melted ice tray on the counter the next morning, the abandoned glasses, how he'd forced himself into the bathroom and forgotten them completely.

"I don't need you to hold my hair when I'm throwing up," she says, reaching out for him, her fingers brushing his sleeve. He doesn't react, and she pulls her hand away. "You bought me about a hundred oranges and boxes of tea when we thought I was sick."

"I went to D.C when you were…" he doesn't finish the sentence. _Sick_? _Miscarrying?_ Neither of them had realised at the time. "I couldn't even stay in the room with doctor Simonds." That's a little more true, a little more significant. Her stomach twists. "I ran right out of the hospital," he adds. Her throat tightens. "I don't think I can…"

"Stop it," she says, identifying her anxiety for what it is: anger. "Just cut it out." He stops, looking at her with wide, liquid eyes, and she fills in several endings to his sentence. _I can't be there for you. I can't take care of you. I can't be married to_ — "I, I can't deal with your — your self-hating… self-pity right now," she says, swallowing the sudden lump in her throat, but it only seems to grow harder and heavier. "I can't listen to you talk yourself into some … some reality, some shitty reality where you're not a good person and I'm better, because if you hadn't noticed, _I'm_ the one in a hospital bed with some, some _IV_ s in my arm because _I_ can't even stay pregnant for three freaking days! This isn't — things aren't always about you!" she says hoarsely, and she can't see him because she's crying, fucking _crying_ , water filling her eyes and she refuses to blink and let them fall, "you're not always the screw up! I'm the one who… who can't do anything! Who doesn't notice what's going on in my own fucking life! So — so just save it, okay?" She takes a gasping breath and it hurts, pulls at her lungs and throat and heart and head and stomach and gut. "Save it for someone who cares, because — because I don't!"

She takes in another painful breath, and a third, blinking, _crying_ , trying not to, and she's aware of him turned to face her and looking at her and she refuses to see. "Robin…" he says, desperately.

"I don't," she says firmly, as firmly as she can, not firmly at all, her jaw freaking _shaking_ as she tries to reel it all in, pull herself back under control, get it _together_ , RJ, but she can't and she never has and she never will. Her body is cramping and aches, her head is spinning and throbs from the drugs and blood loss, everything is wrong and this isn't the way she wanted things to end. She always says the wrong fucking things. He thinks _he's_ the screw up?

She doesn't want it to be like this. He isn't looking at her anymore, isn't touching her, isn't running from the room. She clenches and unclenches her jaw. They have to talk about this. But she doesn't want to: she wants to _forget_ this, make it not be true, even if it means having the baby — _a_ baby, now, there's no longer a _the_ , there'll never be a _the_ , severe uterine scarring, _have you ever miscarried before_? and _undetected_ and _self-abort in the first few weeks_ and _you and your husband don't use birth control?_ She's thinking about it and she's sick and she hurts and she can't breathe, she can't fucking _breathe_ , she puts her fist to her mouth and now he's touching her, his hands on her arms, her sides, her face, not sure where to place himself, trying to not tangle with the IV —

"Robin," he says again, his voice thin and fragile and desperate, his hands settling on her shoulders, leaning towards her, halfway to an embrace but stopping, because of the IVs or the hospital bed or because she keeps telling him _no_ and he always chases her anyway. What if someday he stops? And she braces her hand behind her to sit forward and push herself towards him, and he has to wedge himself beside the railing and she has to trail her left arm behind her for the IV and it's painful to move like this but they position themselves somehow and her arm around him and his hand is in her hair and they're both gross and crying and she wants it to _stop_ and she wants to stay like this, the twisting and the pain and all, his knee digging into her leg and his heart pounding and her stupid crying ruining the collar of his shirt.

When she can breathe again, when they can breathe again, hours or years or minutes later, when each inhale isn't a gasp and when his heart is no longer thudding against her — when she can breathe again, she leans back against the raised bed, pulling him with her, and he shifts his weight so that he's half sitting on her, and the only thing she can think to say is: "My leg's going to fall asleep." She strokes his hair and takes a shaky breath. "You weigh a ton."

His lips press into the corner of her neck and shoulder. "All muscle, baby," he says, but moves. She slides as far to the left as she can, and he's finally able to wriggle himself beside her, on his side so he can throw his arm over her shoulders.

"Really? You're the big spoon?" She laughs shakily. His thumb strokes her shoulder.

"You should feel grateful," he says. "I hate cuddling." She _hmms_ in skeptical agreement, still on her back, tilting her head towards him. She sees him watching her, but closes her eyes. She feels herself start to drift almost immediately, exhaustion and fear and pain and all. He keeps stroking her shoulder. "Robin?"

She _hmms_ again. Keeps her eyes closed.

He stays silent for a moment. "You're not a screw up."

He runs and he avoids and he hides, but he's always there beside her in the end. She presses herself to him as best she can without moving too much more. He inches closer. "I'm sorry about the… baby," she says into his shirt, forcing her mouth to form around the syllables, feeling him go tense for just a second.

"You never… wanted it, did you?" he asks, his voice tired and resigned.

"I did," she says softly. He smells like dried sweat and cigarette smoke and laundry soap and cologne, and he goes stiff around her again. "I didn't, but I did. When I thought it was what you wanted…" his fingers digging into her shoulder. "I kept… imagining it like you said." She has to stop and take a breath, let it out slow. "I kept seeing you with him, I kept thinking of it as a _him_ , I didn't want to have a baby but I did, I really did think I could if… if you did."

He takes a shaky breath and swallows and exhales through his nose, and then a second, hicupping breath after. He seems to realise how hard he's gripping her shoulder and relaxes his fingers, presses his face into the crook of her neck. She waits, her heart pounding, for him to say something. "I kept thinking it was a boy too," he says. They let that sit for a moment between them. "Who needs _girls_ ," he adds, his voice twisting in joking disgust.

"I know, right?" she murmurs. "So needy."

"All that frilly shit."

"Glitter and ruffles everywhere."

"We'd definitely have done better with a boy," he says, and she swallows at the past tense, the matter-of-fact tone of his voice. He moves again, readjusts himself against her, more of his weight on her side.

"See, this is why we don't cuddle," she says, trying to shift away. "You're such a freaking leech and you can never lie still."

He huffs in annoyance and inhales, blows out onto her neck and she twists and sucks in a gasping laugh at the tickling feeling, whacks the back of his head. He cackles and lifts himself up on his elbows, moving so he's above her, looking her in the face. "Are you okay?" he asks, serious again, no pretence or jokes.

She feels her smile fade, looking at him, and she shakes her head _no_. "Are you?"

He hesitates, looks away, looks back, and shakes his head _no_. "I feel like shit," he says softly, looking solemn. "Are we okay?"

"I hope so." She tries to smile at him. He kisses her forehead and settles back down, pointedly pressing himself against her side. His stupid bony hip digs into her, pressing against her belly where she's sorest, but she doesn't want to tell him to move. It's not unbearable, and the warmth of him and closeness of him is better. She closes her eyes again.

"When Lily called me," he says, a few minutes later, and she's more than halfway asleep but pulls herself up and and breathes in deep, "I didn't even think about… all I was thinking about was you. Even when she _told_ me, at first I only cared about you."

"I didn't want it to happen like this," she says softly. She never wanted this. Him rushing on a plane, their friends in the waiting room, Lily with tears running down her face, Ted keeping Barney on the phone for hours, him standing away from the foot of the bed… everything rushed and frantic and painful, everyone knowing and looking at her and this deep, hot pain. "I didn't want this, _any_ of this, but I didn't want it — _like_ this." And her throat is getting tight again and she turns her face away…

"I know," he says, calmly, and she feels something inside her relax and unclench. "You were right," he continues, his head resting on her shoulder, his hand drifting along her shoulder. "This wasn't the right time."

"There might…" she takes a deep breath. Now isn't the time for _might_. "There won't be a right time," she says shakily. He's quiet, still, except for his fingers trailing along her collarbone. "I can't do this again." Medically? Physically? Emotionally? If he argues, will she let him?

"Yeah," he says. Not happy, not unhappy.

"I can't," she says again, swallowing. She almost wants him to try to fight it, almost wants to see if he can put a foot in the door, keep her from locking it, keep the possibility open, give her the option in case she ever wants it after all… but he doesn't.

"I know," he says simply.

She doesn't speak for a while in case he wants to, but he's silent, shifting yet again and letting his hand fall down to her breast. And whether that means that he's feeling okay or whether that means that he physically can't go half an hour without copping a feel, the gesture is strangely comforting. Business as usual. She kind of still wants to cry. " _Are_ we okay?" she asks, clearing her nose.

"Except for the fact that you owe me ten bucks," he says, "I think so."

* * *

 **Lenox Hill Hospital, Manhattan.**

 **Thursday, August 20th.**

* * *

 _i turned around, my life was changing._

* * *

She wakes up in the middle of the night, the room dim and her body aching with pain. Robin groans and tries to stretch and regrets it, sucking in a breath through her teeth. Although she's being kept overnight for observation, she's graduated from her IVs. She kind of misses the painkillers. Her head is pounding at full force now, and the cramping heat in her stomach is pulsing through her entire body.

She shifts, trying to get comfortable, and opens her eyes. Barney has pulled the sofa halfway towards the bed so that it lies at an odd diagonal, and he's sprawled on it, his calves and feet dangling over the arm and his neck bent at an uncomfortable angle. For her sanity, she's glad he didn't try to bunk it with her, but he's going to be pretty sore in the morning…

She looks at him sleeping, illuminated by emergency lighting and the city lights pouring in the window, his jacket folded under his head as a pillow. Although the others had offered repeatedly to stay, and hadn't left until well past midnight (Barney had learned doctor Simonds' first name — Elizabeth — and used it to great effect), one by one the gang had all gone home, overtired children in tow. She'd taken a stab at letting Barney go home as well, but he'd refused.

She watches him, and tries to decide how she feels. Exhausted. Sore. Drained. There's a heaviness in her, and even though he stayed and even though he doesn't think she screwed up, she's not sure yet that that's true. This is what she _wanted_ , so why — or is it because this is what she wanted? Did some part of her know, realise, make this…

And if that's true, then what does…

She pushes those thoughts away and concentrates on her headache, on the whirr of the air conditioners, on anything else in the world. She doesn't think about Lily's tears or Marshall's assurances or Ted's speeches or Tracy's outsider's clarity or Barney telling her she wasn't a screw up; that they all _believe_ in her, what a cliché, and that even so, even so, she wanted this pregnancy to stop and it _did_. Would they really feel like that if she _did_ it? Would Barney? When he wakes up, when the emotions are less raw, will he think back — on how she shut the door, on how she told him she'd thought about it, on everything of the last few days — will he think back and resent her then? Tomorrow? The next day? Or does he actually love her that unconditionally?

Is it even possible?

She has to stop, she told herself she'd stop thinking about it. She almost wakes him up, just to not be alone with her thoughts, she casts around for something, anything to do. There's a TV; is there a remote? She looks around and spots a legal pad at the foot of the bed. He'd been holding it earlier. (She had a dream, she remembers, triggered by the sight: he'd been standing on the balcony, he'd been standing and…) He must have set it there when he went to sleep on the couch. She pushes the button to raise the bed to a sitting position and tries to grab it.

Her head pounds and her entire body goes taut and pulls and aches as she tries to stretch and reach for the legal pad, nudging it with her fingers and finally pulling it to her by inches. She's breathing heavily, her heart pounding, when she settles back down. By angling it towards the window, she can more-or-less read in the dark.

To her mild surprise, she recognises Ted's handwriting. She flips through the first few pages: he's scrawled on them all. The first page is _her_ , bullet points of her medical history, arrows indicating chronological order. She glances at the next page and understands what's going on: he'd taken notes, her medical history, things the doctor had said, nurses had said, speculation and even in parenthesis in one part: _as cited on webmd_. Pages four and five are like a novel, paragraphs of information, lists of side effects and medications, and she skims and recognises the exact things doctor Simonds had told her. Ted must have cornered her at some point, while she was in surgery maybe, and she pictures him asking questions and getting answers.

She can't bring herself to read any of it, her heart twisting in response.

She flips to the sixth page, and it's completely different, Ted's scrawl replaced by Barney's all-capitals printing, _call James_ on top of the page like a header. There are no notes on her medical condition here, just lists of places — places to bring kids? Places in New York? And then a list she can identify, countries the two of them have visited together, her finger trailing over _Nicaragua._ Four countries. Five if you counted the United States. And beside it, a list two dozen long. She knows suddenly that she made the right decision. She looks at the countries for a long time, and flips to the next page — but it's blank.

She thinks about that, everything, and she doesn't know how much later it is that Barney groans from the couch, loudly and uncomfortably. She watches him stir and rub his neck and move around trying to get comfortable. He'd chosen to sleep with his feet pointed towards her, and she doesn't understand why until he opens his eyes and is immediately looking at her. "Robin?" he asks sleepily. He puts his elbow underneath himself and props himself up, wincing and muttering a swear as he moves. "Are you okay?"

She looks from him to his list to him again. She'd made the right decision, yesterday, but she takes a deep breath. "I quit my job."

He looks at her as though he doesn't understand. "What?"

"I was going to tell you when you got back from D.C.," she says. Her heart is pounding. She looks down at the legal pad. "I'm still going to be at WWN. There was a correspondent position they've been trying to fill. For the international newsroom. It's less hours, but it's a travelling position."

She sees his mouth open, close. He licks his lips. She thinks he swallows, but it's not light enough to be sure. "You didn't have to do that," he says, his voice wary, careful, holding himself back.

"You - you kept talking about travelling to other countries, when we thought…" she takes a sharp breath. "And when you… we had a great time in Nicaragua. And we're always saying we're going take off and go somewhere. We could go travelling for a while. I thought … we'd have fun." She remembers when all she wanted to do was see the world, how lonely it had been by herself. She looks down at his list: two dozen countries in one column, four in the other.

 _(What are you talking about? We can't just take off to Nicaragua.)_

"You could Skype with the Feds, it wouldn't have to be…" _forever_ , she trails off, her stomach plunging, because he's not saying anything.

( _Come on! When was the last time we did something crazy fun?_ )

He's still just looking at her. She doesn't like it when he's so perfectly still, so far away and not moving. "Barney?"

"Are you sure?" he asks, his voice rough. It's three in the morning, they're in a hospital, she took a half day at work to talk to her bosses about a change in positions and then had a debilitating medical crisis, and she's _not_ sure, things aren't okay, she's scared and she hurts and she thinks he might wake up in the morning — one morning, _a_ morning — and resent her. But it's her fault, isn't it? She's the one who can't do anything — she's the one who neglected him — she's the one who couldn't make him happy, and doesn't that mean she's the one who needs to try? She'd talked to her bosses and collapsed and woken up and he'd written a list of places for them already.

Signs from the universe saying _—_

"Yes," says Robin, and he pushes himself up from the sofa, and her head is pounding and her body aches and the mattress dips under his weight and he's kissing her and they're okay, they're going to be okay, and her heart aches and pounds and she laughs against his mouth from relief.

* * *

 _what did i learn, it's not that easy._


	8. The Strait of Corryvreckan

as _a vermonter, it always cracks me up whenever the gang would talk longingly about visiting vermont (and proceed to get sugaring season completely wrong… protip to new yorkers: you can't see the fall foliage_ and _gather maple syrup in the same trip unless your weekend lasts six months)._

 _i got super mega stuck on this chapter, so i'm really sorry about how long it took and any awkwardness that results. there's still an epilogue left, but it's already mostly written and should be up relatively soon. wow! thanks for sticking with me!_

* * *

 **Brattleboro, Vermont.**

 **Friday, February 5th.**

 **2016.**

* * *

"Oh my god, it's perfect," Lily gasps.

"Look at the cute little hedges and the cute little shutters!" Tracy says, her hands clasped to her heart.

"Note the pedimented windows and dormers, typical of the Georgian style," Ted says, his hands clasped to _his_ heart.

"It's so freaking cute I want to punch it," Robin sighs, shifting her overnight bag from one hand to the other.

The bed and breakfast is two stories of whitewashed brick, with a slate roof and perfectly symmetrical windows and chimneys, surrounded by perfectly manicured lawns, a hedge wall, and formal gardens, covered in a perfect blanket of clean, fluffy snow. Tasteful fairy lights hang from the eaves of the building and wrap around the tapered hedges flanking the door. The sky is a clear, crisp blue, the sun shining warmly, causing everything to glisten… it's like a postcard. The kind describing the joys of Vermont to cynical New Yorkers.

"You scoundrels! You'll never take me alive!" Barney yells from a few feet behind them.

"Famous last words, fiend!" Marshall cries, going for a tackle, trying to shove Barney into the snowy hedge with Marvin laughing at his heels. Barney twists and barely dodges, cackling.

Robin stops cooing over the bed and breakfast to watch the roughhousing: Barney shoving Marshall, who follows Marvin's prompting and chasing him across the snowy lawn with exaggerated faces and noises. He gets a hand on Barney's shoulder and uses his fist to muss his hair. Barney whines loudly, escapes, and launches into a dastardly speech. Marvin laughs and laughs and tackles at his uncle, who dodges and scoops Marvin up under his arm.

"Just think," Lily sighs, still entranced by the bed and breakfast and not paying any attention to her husband and son's roughhousing, Barney being shoved into one of the sculpted hedges, or the fidgeting toddler in her own arms. "It's our first real family vacation!"

"I know!" Tracy says excitedly. "I've never been to Vermont before! I know it's too early in the season for sugaring, but can we hit up a supermarket and act like we got it from a tree?"

"You know it!" Lily says, freeing one hand to high five Tracy.

"Psh, _Vermont_ maple syrup," Robin mutters, shaking her head, turning her attention back to the others. She loosens her scarf.

"Hey, idiots!" Lily calls. Marshall and Barney stop shoving one another and look over at her. "Doctor McConnell wants to go sugaring! Let's get checked in!"

The men head back over to the group. "Sure," says Marshall, scooping Marvin from his shoulders. "We can't let Doctor McConnell down."

"I have a question for Doctor McConnell," says Barney, smoothing out his clothing. He has pine needles in his hair that everyone pointedly avoids mentioning.

"Are you guys ever going to call me by my first name ever again?" Tracy asks, blushing and looking extremely pleased.

"Nope," says Ted, just as happy, tearing his gaze from the dormers to give her a sideways hug.

"My query is as follows," says Barney, brushing snow off the arms and shoulders of his jacket. Everyone continues to avoid mentioning the pine needles. "Where _will_ the good doctor be checking in?" He straightens up and looks meaningfully at the Bed and Breakfast, its adorable chimneys, its top-rated rooms. "Now, Robin and I will be staying in the Ripley Suite, the original master bedroom of this fine home. In-room massages, two-course breakfasts, river and forest views, not mentioning the room itself…"

"There's a fireplace," Robin says, "and a full bath."

"Which we will be having sex in," Barney adds.

"French doors, separate sitting room with leather furniture,"

"Probably having sex there too," Barney waves his hand in a _we'll see_ gesture.

"And I quote 'luxurious' bedroom with an antique sleigh bed…"

"Definitely having sex in _that_ ,"

"Too bad for you losers this place doesn't allow kids," Robin says, rummaging in her purse for her printed out reservation papers. "But hey, we'll let you know how this all goes down." She and Barney share an extremely necessary high five.

"Whatever," says Marshall. "The Holiday Inn has an indoor pool."

"Please," says Barney, indicating their surroundings with an expansive gesture.

"Well, let's get these bastards checked in," Lily says, giving Robin the stink eye. Robin fans her reservation papers in front of her face. Tracy laughs, bending to check on Penny in her stroller, the one-year-old looking adorable in her monkey hat and tiny mittens.

"Hey, do you need help with your luggage?" Ted asks, already reaching for Robin's overnight bag.

"How badly do you want to see the inside of this place?" Robin asks.

"Incredibly badly," says Ted.

After some manoeuvring, jealous sighing, prying Ted away from the banisters, _oohing_ over the suite, and checking Google Maps on their phones, it's agreed that the others will go on to the Holiday Inn, check in, and get some food into the kids, before reconvening for drinks and dinner at a real restaurant at six. Toddlers are wrangled, Ted is dragged from the 19th century mouldings, cars are loaded, and Barney and Robin are alone.

They stand on the front lawn of the bed and breakfast for a moment, watching the rental cars pull out onto the busy street. There's something to be said — almost — about the way the thick hedges block the view and sound of the busiest road in town, the way it was all yelling and joking and roughhousing and now it's just quiet, like it's some kind of metaphor or thing. Almost.

"Wanna check out the room?" Barney asks, his eyes focused on the road. "I think I saw a mini-fridge."

"Yeah," Robin says, relieved.

They head back inside and upstairs to their suite. True to advertisement, there's a luxurious sitting room and an elegant bedroom; a deep bath and a gas fireplace. Robin loves it: all the fussy little details, the thick rugs, the patterns of the wallpaper, the unevenness of the window glass: she walks through the suite, taking it in without the gang's cooing in her ears, running her hand over the footboard of the bed. It's homey in a way that she can't name, except that it _reminds_ her of home, back in Canada, and fills her with a kind of nostalgic familiarity. She knows that Barney's tastes run almost 180 degrees in the opposite direction from _adorable_ and _rustic_ , and she steps out of the bedroom to check on him in the sitting room.

There _is_ a mini-fridge and he's retrieved a bag of artisan chips from it, sitting on the arm of the leather sofa and chewing thoughtfully. A lone pine needle still lingers above his right ear, and he looks vaguely out the window, at the snowy forest and bed and breakfast's tidy grounds. If he notices her watching, Barney doesn't indicate it; he eats chips and looks out the window, and Robin watches him and wonders when they got so quiet.

"Hey," she says, leaning against the doorframe, jutting her hip. "Do you wanna test out the bed?"

He doesn't turn to look at her. "Maybe later," he says vaguely, folding up the empty chip bag and wiping his fingers on a napkin.

She nods and feels her heart falter.

Surely, after six months, they should be better? She looks at him and he looks over at her, and she wants to ask him what's wrong, why they no longer have anything to say, but what if he answers and the answer is… is what? Things are fine between them, she reminds herself. There's no reason to stand here and think about where they went wrong; there was no wrong to _go_.

Robin had been checked out of the hospital after an overnight stay, still sore and exhausted. Barney had done his best to take care of her at home, but he'd been distracted — and should she have said something there? But she hadn't wanted to upset him more. She remembered how reluctant he'd been to approach her hospital back then. No, afraid. None of the others had been — No, stop. He'd done his best to take care of her after. Water in his hands. It had been Ted who had taken notes; Lily who had researched support groups that Robin hadn't gone to; Marshall who had brought by a mayonnaise-y casserole they hadn't touched; Tracy who had taken breaks from her studying to call and check in. But Barney had _said_ they were alright — _said_ , but maybe he did resent her now, maybe that was why…

Why they're in a romantic Vermont inn, and he's eating a bag of potato chips.

Things are fine when they're around their friends — and it isn't like they're _fighting_. They still get along. And there's a chasm, vast and silent, but — there's nothing to talk about, they're getting along fine. For all Robin knows, she's imagining the whole thing. He said they were fine, and she doesn't want to find out. After six months — after six months, how could they not be?

She forces herself away from the bedroom door, and he shifts his weight on the sofa's arm. "Hey," she says, closing the distance, standing before him, "you weren't kidding when you said we were gonna do it all over this suite, were you?"

She's relieved when he smiles up at her, lazy and half-focused, shifting his weight on the sofa's arm. "I never joke about the serious stuff," he says, reaching for her.

He kisses her the same as ever, and that means they're fine, doesn't it? It isn't as though he's ever said anything to imply _he_ didn't think so. She supports her knee on the sofa as she kisses him, and his hand curls over her jaw, pushes back to her ear, and she presses herself down, closer to him, bracing her hands on his shoulders, his hands sliding down her back, under and up the back of her blouse, warm and familiar.

There comes the moment where he should deepen the kiss, where she should pull him towards her, pull him onto the sofa cushions, where he should press himself against her, where things should go as they always do. Robin kisses him, pulling him towards her as she shifts away; they part just an inch, his eyes are clouded, she tugs at him, pulls him up with her, kisses his jaw —

— And he holds back, doesn't stand, kisses her cheek and shifts his arm and looks at his watch.

She pulls away, stung, her breath catching in her throat. He drops his arm and has the decency to look guilty, but it's too late, and Robin takes a step back, her feet sinking into the carpet. "Sorry," she says, "am I interrupting something?"

Now he stands, hastily, smoothly, undoing his tie, the top button of his shirt, moving after her. "What? No." His expression changes: "I wanted to see how much time we had," he says, and the leer, the tilt of his head and the crookedness of his smile, they're all _right_ … but he's the best liar she knows. She sees him swallow and he _checked_ the _time_.

Without this, what are they?

It's like ice down to her stomach. It's not rejection outright, but when has he ever been distracted from _sex_? When has he ever not wanted…? Gone after her with less than a single-minded determination? And he's turned her down twice in fifteen minutes. Her heart races, and she shakes her head, unable to say anything. Not knowing what to say. In a romantic _bed and breakfast_. In _Vermont_. And he doesn't even want her.

He loses the leer and the pretence, tilts his head, reaches for her but changes his mind. She feels her face burning and turns away, looking out the stupid _window_ , her hands smoothing her clothing, running up and down her sides. "Hey, baby, it's nothing," he says, but the _baby_ stings; a nickname he only uses when he's playing World's Greatest Couple.

"Forget it," says Robin. Never once. What he should be doing is chasing her, kissing her against the media centre, against the window, as he'd joked with their friends not twenty minutes ago. As he'd _joked_. He's apologetic, she can hear that, but he's not _chasing_ her. He always has before. And her stomach twists and thuds and her face burns. Ted's taking Tracy to Vermont to celebrate her doctorate! Let's tag along and go to a bed and breakfast! It'll be fun and romantic and we'll…

We'll not be like this anymore, and _this_ was something she'd hoped she'd imagined until right now. She stares out the window determinedly, gathering herself together, trying to find the will and force to push past this. Confront him? Before she quite decides how or what, he sighs behind her.

"Look," he says, "I kinda have something I need to do in like… half an hour. Which is plenty of time to _do it_ on the couch, so what do you—"

"Do what?" Robin demands, turning back around, setting her jaw.

"Sex," he clarifies, pointing at the sofa. "When I say we do it on the couch, I mean sex." She gives him her best unimpressed look, and he winces. "Um," he says, looks up at the ceiling. "Is it _important_ …?"

"Yes!" she says, snaps, pulling at her feelings until they feel like anger. Good, sharp anger. "What could possibly be more important —" _than me_ , she's about to say, and realises while saying it that she doesn't want to know the answer. She doesn't want to know. They're _past_ this. He said they were _past_ this. He said it six months ago.

" _Nothing_ ," he says quickly, filling in the blank on his own, his eyes wide and alarmed. "There's nothing." _Now_ he stands and takes the step towards her, _now_ he kisses her, _now_ his thumb brushes along her jaw. It's a serious kiss, a good kiss, and he pulls away and she follows him, not wanting it to stop. The kissing. Him wanting her. He pulls back a little and looks at her, the corners of his mouth lifting. "It's a surprise."

For a second she doesn't understand what he's referring to. His hand is still at her jaw, thumb brushing along her cheekbone, and she lays hers on top of it. His left hand. "A surprise?"

He nods. "It's a _really awesome_ surprise." His smile grows, and he takes a step back, lifting his chin, and now that he's said it, the pride starts to radiate off of him: whatever he's talking about, he's been holding it in. He snaps at his lapels, and practically bounces on his heels. "It's going to be so awesome, you can't even believe it. Even when you see it, you're going to say, 'how, just how, can something so awesome exist? And how can you, Barney, be so awesome and also attractive and well-dressed? And _I'll_ say —"

"Okay… what are you talking about?" Robin cuts him off before he can build up to full steam, but she feels herself start to smile: some of the fog, the dizziness, burning away at his clear enthusiasm.

"I'm planning a really awesome surprise," he clarifies.

"Yeah, I got that part," she says, crossing her arms across her chest, trying not to smile.

"I'm not telling you, no matter what," he says, tilting his head. "Your hint is: Vermont."

Vermont. What's even _in_ Vermont? They're already in a bed and breakfast. Is there anything else left? Maple syrup Robin is sure is lower quality than Canada's? Do they have hockey games here? Are there enough people? Knowing Barney, it's something huge and elaborate, but Robin can't imagine anything huge and elaborate in _Vermont_.

He looks at her with a bright, excited expression, clearly hoping she's about to demand more hints. "I'm not telling you what it is, no matter how much you beg," he repeats hopefully.

It's a surprise. Her heart thuds in her chest and she shakes her head, shoves him gently as she moves away from the drafty window. "Yeah, I'm not begging," she says, relief filling her heart and lungs, shaking her head as she walks past him. She'd thought… but he's just _planning_ something. It isn't like that after all. And now she's glad, filled with a rush of relief, that she hadn't said anything after all. There was nothing to say. She's so glad she didn't. She knew better, she tells herself. Good. A niggling doubt remains, and she ignores it.

"I'm not telling you, even if you tie me to the bed and have your way with me," he suggests next. She smiles. He follows her into the bedroom. "I'm not telling you, even if you tie me to the bed and there's hot wax and you rough me up a little," he tries, sounding progressively more hopeful. "A lot. Even if you rough me up a _lot_."

She puts a hand on his chest; he leans against it. "I thought you had to be somewhere in thirty minutes…?"

He smirks at her. "There's somewhere elseI can be in _three_ minutes."

"Hey-o," she says, pulling away, smiling, going for her overnight bag on the bed. Mostly for want of something to do, besides jump her husband, she unzips it; pulls out her makeup bag. "I'm gonna need a little bit more than three minutes over here, buddy."

He leans against the curved footboard of the bed, hands braced around the top, and looks at her sideways, expression mischievous. "And then we'll _do it_?"

It was nothing, she tells herself. They're totally back to normal. There was no normal to get to; she was imagining the whole thing. "You know, when you call sex _doing it_ , you sound like a middle schooler," she says.

"We shall shortly conduct sexual intercourse in a manner most depraved?" He bumps her with his hip.

"Unless it's _very_ shortly, I'm thinking we might have to wait until after your errand," Robin points out. She unzips her toiletry bag, removes her toothbrush, toothpaste, and birth control pills, expecting him to retort with a comment about the word _shortly_ and its various euphemistic uses; she has two or three ready on her own. Except he doesn't say anything. She feels that niggling again, glances over at him to see him quickly looking away from the toiletries on the bedspread. She has the sudden urge to beg for the surprise, to pull him onto the bed, to fill this silence. She's been back on the pill for six months. It's not a secret. He's never said anything about it. Neither has she.

Pull him onto the bed, ignore this feeling, the silence blooming around them. Or, _or_. But he's planning a surprise. Things aren't what she feels they are. "Does it… bug you?" she asks, fussing with her bag to look busy.

"No," he says, but he knew what she meant without asking, and so she doesn't know if he's telling the truth or lying. He wouldn't lie to her. He doesn't lie to her. His fingers drum on the footboard. "I mean… I don't want what happened last year… to happen again," he says.

"Right," she says. "Me neither." That's why she's taking birth control again. That's why, even though she didn't ask him to, he's started using it again as well. No more heartbreak; no more hospitals. But there's a difference between closing and locking a door, and Robin knows that more than anyone.

"Uh," he says, scratching his neck. "Did you think…" he trails off.

"Think what?" She leans against the footboard too, mimicking his pose, her head turned to take in his profile.

He looks straight ahead, up at the ceiling. He shakes his head a little. "Nothing," he says. "It's nothing." She should press him, but she doesn't want to. And it's nothing, he wouldn't lie, it's nothing. Why make it into a thing?

They stand there in silence for a moment. He checks his watch. "I should get going," he says.

"For the 'surprise'?" she asks, because that's what she's supposed to do, and she tries to force back some of their easy banter and it _sounds_ forced. Her head pounds. They were doing so well, just a moment ago. Why did she have to pick now to unpack? Why did she have to… why did _he_ have to plan some stupid surprise? It never used to be like this, start and stop, dancing around all the things they don't want to say. There never used to be things they didn't want to say. Were there?

What was he going to ask her?

"Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies," he says, mouth quirking into a smile. "I have to take the car."

"To…?" she leads, because she doesn't like this, the dipping into things unsaid, and if she keeps at it, the joking will sound less forced.

"Robin, Robin, Robin," he says, shaking his head sadly and heaving a sigh. "You _had_ your chance to bang the information out of me, but it's been, like, four minutes. Now I gotta _go_."

" _Damn_ ," she says in mock disappointment, "we could have done _so_ _much_ in those four minutes." He smirks and gives her a look, his eyes flicking up from her chest, her hips, and Robin's pretty sure she could have gotten the information from him in a lot less than five minutes if she'd really wanted to. Feeling a lot better about everything, she drapes her arms on his shoulders and kisses him lazily. He kisses back immediately, and she pulls away when he tries to take it farther, patting his chest reassuringly as she draws away. "Ooh, better get going, champ," she says. "How long is this 'errand,' anyway?"

"Um, a couple of hours," he says, grinning at her teasing, one hand clenching the footboard tightly and using the other to loosen his tie. "Oh, but, I told Lil; they'll swing by and pick you up at six for dinner." She barely hears that part.

"Hold on," Robin says. It's as though Barney's just thrown ice water over them both. She'd thought that when he'd said _surprise_ , he meant a ten minute errand. She'd thought when he'd had _something to do_ , he'd be running to a shop and back. It's almost three hours until dinner, and she realises all at once: he's going to take off and _go_ somewhere, and she's going to be left alone in a _bed and breakfast_ , twiddling her thumbs, not just for a little bit, but _the rest of the night_? What part of that sounds remotely okay? Her head twinges in annoyance, in — hurt, in feelings she doesn't want to think about. He takes only a step or two and does stop and wait, turning back, the unasked question clear on his face, like he doesn't know. Like he really doesn't know. "You're not going to be back for dinner?" For _dinner_? He's leaving her here, and he's smiling like he has no clue.

"I'll meet you guys at the Marina," he says. "No big." She looks at him for a sign of understanding, but he just looks expectant, _pleased,_ as though he's awaiting praise and as though their teasing still _means_ anything, as though he can just take off without a care. Her stomach flops, hurt and surprise giving away into anger, that he doesn't get it, that he doesn't _care_. That they can be joking one second, but that he doesn't mean any of it, because he'd always intended on taking off _for the afternoon_ , leaving her shut out and alone. All his suggestions, all his jokes — and he still doesn't get it. That they were just _jokes_. He never intended on — he was always just going to take off. Her face burns.

"Fine," she snaps, and he either doesn't notice or ignores it. "But you're dropping me off at the Holiday Inn on your way _wherever_." If she has to stay here alone, she'll die. It's hard to even look around, and the fussy, perfect little bedroom, the fussy, elegant little sitting room. He hadn't meant any of it. It was all just a joke. She doesn't want a surprise; she wants — she wants… things to be okay. Things to be fixed. This to _stop_ , this distance, this — this not having sex in a bed and breakfast; not that she _wants_ to, right now, not anymore, but — that everything she thinks is easy, he thinks is a joke. That he thinks a _surprise_ is the thing she wants. That he would ever, ever think this was a good idea, and she wants to yell at him, she really does, but what good would that do? Would that help? Or would she just be dragging him into her mess? He's looking at her expectant, _pleased_. Christ, her head hurts.

Her heart hurts.

He's starting to look confused now, his head tilted slightly to the side, eyes squinted slightly in a way that means he's trying to figure things out. He reaches out for her hand. "Hey, Robin?"

"Yes, Barney?" she asks impatiently, avoiding his touch, grabbing her purse from a chair.

"It really is a good…" When did he start getting hesitant? His hand drops to his side. "You'll like it a lot. I mean it, you're really gonna —"

"Let's just get going," she snaps, half wanting him to snap back, to argue, to _understand_. To admit that he doesn't understand, to _realise_ what she's thinking, to let her yell and set him straight. But she doesn't want to argue, even as she snaps at him, even though she desperately does. They're already off track. Why make it worse? This was supposed to be a romantic goddamn weekend.

"You'll like it a lot," he promises again, pressing his fingers against the small of her back, ushering her out the door.

She steps away from his touch, her face hot with — with anger, with hurt, with things she doesn't want to think about. She doesn't want a surprise. She wants him.

* * *

 **Holiday Inn Express — Marina Restaurant**

 **Brattleboro, Vermont.**

 **Friday, February 5th.**

* * *

"Spill," says Lily, once they're settled in her suite and Lily has finished arbitrating between Marvin and Daisy and their respective toys. This suite is miles and miles from the one Robin has left behind: beige carpet, neutral walls, orange-ish wood furniture, and despite the Eriksens having only been here for an hour, max, it is already cluttered with furniture and toys.

"About what?" Robin asks wearily, leaning back into the overstuffed loveseat.

"Everything! Anything," Lily suggests, leaning down from her armchair to help Penny smash brightly coloured plastic blocks together, the year old's face tight with concentration. Robin watches the way Lily does this, with barely half her attention, so casual and used to being a mom. If she — if they — well; the baby would have been born around now, _if_. It's still a little hard to think about. She doesn't regret it, exactly — but that's not true. Robin regrets everything about last summer, how it happened, why it happened, that it ever happened. The first time she had her period, after, she cried from guilt and relief, right there on the toilet seat. The baby would have been born around now, and… and, well.

But at the same time, she still can't imagine herself like Lily, the easy, unfocused way she tracks all three toddlers. Robin can handle one niece or nephew at a time. Preferably Marvin, who can talk and is well on his way to being toilet trained.

This is not really what Robin feels like spilling about. There's a growing list. Kids, her husband, the fact that she's in a freaking Holiday Inn and not… "Where's Tracy?" she asks, rubbing her forehead.

"She and Ted wanted some 'private time,'" Lily says with a little scoff. Robin can't help but half-smile at how put out Lily is at Ted and Tracy wanting some couple's time on the romantic Vermont weekend they'd planned to celebrate her doctorate, and the rest of the gang had invited themselves on… but then she remembers: romantic Vermont weekend, and goes cold again. "And Marshall ran to a supermarket down the road to get food for the kids, so, spill, Scherbatsky."

Robin lets her gaze drift towards Marvin and Daisy, playing at the foot of the bed. "I don't know, what's new with you?" she asks.

"Noo," Lily whines, "don't give me that! All I do is take care of kids half the day, and take care of Marshall and the Captain the rest of the time!"

"Weird combo, but, yeah, you did," Robin says, reaching out her fist.

Lily gives her a look. "I want to hear about your life! How's the new job? How was _Spain_? Was it gorgeous? Did you and Barney have sex everywhere? On everything? Did you have sex in public?"

"Dry spell?" Robin asks sympathetically.

"Not after tonight," Lily says bluntly. "Nothing says 'crazy monkey sex' than a hotel room you're paying a hundred thirty bucks a night for."

The woman makes a good point. "I don't know," she says slyly. "Hotel rooms your job pays for are also pretty conductive to the sex."

"Tell me about Spain," Lily sighs. "Paint me a word picture."

Robin had officially started her new job last October, and was relieved to discover that she really enjoyed it. She missed the routine that came with anchoring, sure, but there was something exciting, _real,_ about getting told a week in advance to travel to some country or another and _report_ news, real news, instead of simply reading it off a teleprompter. It felt like she was making a real difference. Russian politics, Venezuelan labour strikes — she never knew where she'd end up next, what she'd cover next, but there was no chance of phoning it in from the studio. And there was room to move up! With some hard work, Robin could eventually start producing her segments, choosing her own stories to report, making an _actual_ difference in the world. Even if she'd taken this job for a chance to spend more time with her husband, she's finding it more than fulfilling in its own right. And taking off to Spain for a week with him, coming home to an airy suite, no babies to worry about, just her and him and a bottle of citrusy Spanish wine?

She tells Lily a little bit about the sex, but even as she thinks about to Spain, she's thinking back to her abandoned room at the inn, Barney's fingers curled around the foot of the sleigh bed, and the short car ride to the Holiday Inn, him chatting away, his voice a little high, trying to reassure her, she could tell, but still not _getting_ it. She hadn't really said anything to him in the car. Hadn't said _see you_ when she'd climbed out. It was kind of petty, she knew that, but she was scared that if she opened her mouth…

"…And then once on the balcony," she finishes, her heart really not in the dishing for once.

Lily sighs happily. "Think I can convince Marshall to take us to Spain for our anniversary?"

"Probably," says Robin, glad to change the subject. "Just tell the Captain you want to check out some Spanish hobo's sculptures, he'd pay for the whole trip."

"Oooh, you know, I _just_ read about this busker who is actually really good with form?" Lily asks, sitting up. "We could take the kids! Exposure to languages at a young age leads—"

"Hey, can I ask you something?" Robin interrupts, the words bursting out of her, the anxiety in her stomach bubbling over.

"Sure?" Lily says, raising her eyebrows, her expression suddenly a little more serious.

Robin leans forward and plasters a reporter's smile on her face, hopes it looks like an excited one. "This surprise Barney is planning… what is it?"

She looks carefully for any of Lily's usual tells, but Lily just shakes her head. "I don't know! I asked him, but he said I'd just tell you!"

"Dammit, I was hoping you would," Robin mutters, leaning back again, rubbing her fingernails along the nubbly loveseat fabric.

"What do you think it is?" Lily asks eagerly. Before Robin can work back up the fake enthusiasm to gossip about it, her friend's expression sobers again. "Hey, is everything okay?"

"What are you talking about?" Robin scoffs, a little laugh busting out with her scorn. Lily gives her her Mom look, and Robin crumbles. "Fine, I'm a little annoyed," she says, trying to smile like it's nothing.

"That he's planning a surprise?" Lily asks. She regards Robin for a second, and then laughs exasperated. "Come on, you married _Barney_. He's always planning _something_."

When she says it like that, Robin feels a hot flash of guilt, because Lily is right. Why is she so mad about this? He's planning her a surprise, trying to make her happy, and she's — well, this. Angry at him, annoyed with him, and she feels queasy and defensive, now. "It's just — he didn't tell me until ten minutes beforehand that he was even leaving," Robin says, wanting to justify herself. "Maybe I didn't want him to take off for the rest of the day, did he think of that?"

"Did you ask him to stay?" Lily asks, giving her that _look_ , the _I know better than you in all things_ look.

Robin swallows. "Well, no." Lily quirks her eyebrows. "Look, that's the _rule_ ," she says, feels her face growing warm, her voice high. "He won't lie, but obviously, a surprise doesn't work with total honesty, so if I ask and he's planning a surprise, he'll tell me that part." She shrugs her shoulders. "and he says that, quote, the challenge is greater if I know he's planning something, and so I don't question him too hard so he doesn't have to lie, and we have this whole sexual favors for hints system worked out. And that way no one is technically lying, and, also, sex."

"Man, I gotta get Marshall in on this surprise stuff," Lily mutters. She takes a moment to stop Penny from trying to stick a huge purple block in her mouth, and Robin watches Marvin and Daisy scream at one another and their stuffed toys. Lily doesn't intercede, so Robin assumes this is the okay kind of screaming. _Kids_. "Is everything okay?" Lily asks, and for a second, Robin still thinking about the toddlers, she doesn't quite connect her thoughts.

"What do you mean?" she asks. "With me and Barney?" Lily lifts her eyebrows. "Yeah, everything's great. Just great."

"Because all these surprises and sexual favors and trips to Spain, it actually does sound pretty great," Lily says.

"Because it is!" Robin says, and tries not to laugh, and feels her stomach knot and twist, because Lily is _right_ , Lily is completely right, and she's the one wrong, for feeling this way. She doesn't even know what way — what she means. Why she feels like this, that she and Barney are no longer on the same page, the way he looks at her sometimes, like he's thinking about what he sees. How scared she is, of disturbing their equilibrium, of asking him what those looks mean. Her! Scared! But Lily's right: he's planning a surprise, and she went into this marriage completely aware he could be a clueless ass.

Lily's giving her this concerned, thoughtful look, and it reminds her of Barney's expression, his hand reaching out for hers, trying to figure her out. Both of them. Robin shakes her head. "Okay, fine," she says, "we had kind of a rough patch, but we worked it out! I changed my job, we're spending more time together, the sex is great…" and she trails off, remembering the inn, the moment he should have pulled her close, the moment he looked at his watch. Which meant _nothing_ , she reminds herself. She's totally overreacting.

"Robin," Lily says, her face crumpling up, "you had a _miscarriage_."

"We'd already decided we weren't going to have kids!" Robin insists, her voice unintentionally sharp. "Yeah, it was…" terrifying, stressful, him looking at her from across the room, the heavy, cold feeling as she realised she may never be what he wanted, that he might know it too — her birth control in her overnight bag. _Does it bother you?_

 _Did you think…_

"You were still in the hospital and had a major procedure," Lily says, her voice choked up in the memory, and Robin is slightly alarmed to see her friend is on the verge of tears at the memory. She doesn't know how to react. "Did you guys ever even talk about it?"

"Yeah, in the hospital," Robin says, unable to look at Lily, her eyes moving to Marvin and Daisy, to Penny, to the painting above the television.

Lily sniffs. "I was so scared for you!" she says, and Robin feels a mean twang of annoyance, Lily turning this into _her_ fears, but Lily continues, wafting her eyes, "I was so scared, I thought you were dying, I didn't even know you were pregnant and you lost the _baby_ , and you _had_ to have been scared, too. You didn't hear Barney on the phone! I've never heard him like that, _ever_ , and he just hung up on me, and you didn't see him when he first came into the hospital. He just _shut down_ , and he hardly ever gets like that, and then the next day, you're both totally fine and never talked about it to _any_ of us!"

"We _were_ totally fine," Robin insists heatedly, her throat tight, refusing to blink, refusing to look away from the stupid landscape painting. "We talked about it, and…"

Lily takes a deep breath. "I don't believe you," she says. "I'm sorry, but I don't."

"We _did_ talk about it, Lily," she says impatiently.

"Sure, in the hospital! And then you changed your job and since then it's just — everything's fine, everything's okay, and Barney trying _all the time_ to impress you, and you getting annoyed!" Lily says heatedly. "You lost a _baby_ and you never dealt with it, either of you!"

"We were never going to have it!" Robin says again, dropping her head into her hands so she can knead at her forehead. There's a sour feeling in the back of her throat, a tightness in her chest.

"But it's still a thing that happened! And you're just pretending everything is fine and okay, but —"

"It is fine, okay?" Robin snaps, dropping her hands, glaring up at Lily. "We had a rough patch, but we're over it — no, stop it," she says, when Lily opens her mouth to interject. "You know what our problem was? The whole reason we landed in this mess in the first place?" She takes a deep breath, to steady herself. "Every time Barney'd get stressed, he'd go to Tracy and tell her all about it. Every time I was worried, I'd talk to your or Ted. We'd let you guys tell us what to do, and, I mean, come on! That's what we did the first time we dated, and look how that worked out!"

"We were trying to _help_ you," Lily says, looking hurt.

"I know," Robin says quickly, "but don't you get it? We never figured anything out for ourselves. We never _talked_. Barney — I was never at home and he was upset, and he latched onto wanting a baby because he was _lonely_. He never said any of that to me, but he told Tracy, and — and that's no good," she finishes weakly, thinking of her own visits to Ted, the lists he'd made in the hospital, the way she kept relying on him to solve her problems.

"Okay," says Lily, leaning forward, her eyes wide and sincere, "I understand that, I do. And you're right, and I'm glad, I'm really, _really_ glad you're trying to figure things out together, but isn't that what you're doing right now? You're mad at Barney _right now_ , and you haven't told him so! And you still haven't really dealt with the —"

"I'm not mad at Barney!" Robin protests in a high voice, interrupting, because she doesn't want to hear Lily bring up the _baby_ , it wasn't even a baby, it wasn't even — she doesn't want to talk about it, it's over, it's _done_. Barney isn't. "Okay, I'm a little _annoyed_ with him right now," she amends, "but it's not a _thing_." It's true. It's a lie. She isn't sure. She wants him to understand, she wants him to… to want to be around her. But he's planning a _surprise_. (One that takes all afternoon, one that leaves her off by herself. He was going to leave her there, in the inn. He hadn't even thought.) And that's, the surprise, that's _good_.

"Robin," Lily pleads.

"No, Lily," says Robin, straightening herself up. "There's nothing to talk about. We're fine. Okay? We're totally fine."

She changes the subject after that, and Lily lets her. It's only another few minutes before Marshall returns with macaroni and cheese and juice boxes, and Robin helps wrangle her nieces and nephew. Ted and Tracy show up about half an hour later, and are forced to endure ribbing from their friends about it; everything floats along smoothly, and Robin feels herself relax as her and Lily's earlier conversation drifts away from her, her conviction in herself growing. When Tracy asks where Barney's gotten off to, Robin laughs and tells everyone he's planning something, to a general fond eyerolling from all. And if she feels a stab of what _can't_ be annoyance that Tracy asks at all, well — well, nothing.

Everything is fine.

Soon, they're all packing into rental cars to go to the restaurant for dinner, a seafood place on the river with colouring books for the older kids and alcohol for the grownups. The big bay windows of the Marina look out over the snowy islands of a nature preserve, but the sun has long since set and, really, the alcohol is what the gang is all here for. Robin peruses the menu and tries not to notice the empty chair.

"Okay," says Ted, "is no one else going to say this? This is a seafood restaurant, but Vermont _has no sea_."

"Yes, it's too bad we live in the 19th century, where automotive travel from the ocean to our table does not yet exist," Robin snarks back, eyeing the lobster.

"Guys, I think, I think I see something out in the water," Marshall is saying, his nose practically pressed to the glass. "I think there's something out there."

"Yeah, I saw it when we were driving by this afternoon," says Tracy. "They have this cute li'l wooden sea monster floating out by the docks."

"Really?"

"Marvin Eriksen, if you don't stop taking crayons from your sister," Lily looms, interceding between her children.

"Hey guys," says Barney pulling his chair back in one smooth motion and sitting down next to Robin.

Ted almost knocks over his wine glass in surprise. "Dude, don't just sneak up on us like that!"

"Whatever, sorry to interrupt your lake creature lookout," Barney scoffs, scooting himself up towards the table and ignoring several questions as to where he's been. "Have you guys ordered yet?"

"Just drinks," says Lily. Robin notices and then ignores her pointed looks, and is just as aware of the way Barney's angled himself towards her, clearly waiting for her to acknowledge his arrival. She's not ignoring him. She tears her gaze away from her menu and forces herself to look at him: he looks wary, lifts his eyebrows fractional, smiles fractionally, silently asking _are we okay_?

"Hey," she says, and is relieved that her smile isn't forced. "How was your secret mystery errand?"

"Like I'm giving it away that easy," he says, leaning in. She meets him for a quick peck, and starts to turn back to her menu, before narrowing her eyes and turning back.

"Have you been smoking?"

He gives an unconvincing scoff of laughter. "What? No. Okay, fine, yes, I smoked a… couple cigarettes."

"Dude," she complains, because she really, honestly, hates nagging him like this. But come on! For one, it doesn't make it any easier for _her_ to stick to her promises to quit when he comes to her tasting all bitter and smoky… "you're going to get cancer," she tells him.

He rolls his eyes at her. "Fine," he whines. Ted and Tracy and Marshall have moved into their own conversation; Lily is watching them, but Robin has the feeling she's really listening to her and Barney, who suddenly, loudly clears his throat and rises from his chair. "Last cigarette ever!" he announces loudly. "Hear that, Ted? Mark this day! I, Barney Stinson, have just quit smoking forever!"

"For the fourth time!" Ted cheers, half-sarcastically raising his glass. Barney gives a little bow, and Robin can't help laughing, shaking her head.

"Hey, good for you, buddy," Marshall says, and the boys begin to talk about other things. Robin listens, smiling, sure Barney is totally full of it, feeling oddly relaxed, knowing that even if he is, he's not mad at her and she was totally right to just let all these things go.

After a waiter takes their orders, the group fractures into small conversations: Lily and Tracy stealing one of the kids's colouring books, the boys debating the new Star Wars movie for the millionth time, Robin flitting between both conversations, less interested in Star Wars ( _nerds_ ) but not wanting — not wanting what? During dessert, Barney reaches over to her and grasps her hand in his, his expression unchanging, his attention still Tracy's eighth recapping of her dissertation, his thumb stroking over her wrist.

At the next lull in the conversation, Robin murmurs, "so, when am I getting this surprise?"

He shoots her a pained look. " _Robin_ ," he whines.

"What, that's a surprise, too?" she asks, feeling warm and a little tipsy and very, very full.

"You don't really get the meaning of the word _surprise_ , do you? Is it because English is your second language?" he asks, eyes twinkling. "Just… wait for it."

" _Or_ …" she says.

They excuse themselves from dinner early.

* * *

 **Brattleboro, Vermont.**

 **Friday, February 5th.**

* * *

He's washing up in the bathroom when Robin gets the phone call, bringing their joking conversation to a halt. It's work: there's been a cancellation, a change of plans. She listens, feeling progressively more excited: this is a great opportunity. For her, for both of them. She lies back on the bed, looking up at the ceiling, and does the mental math.

When she hangs up, she stretches out her sore limbs and beams. "What?" Barney asks, smiling, having finished cleaning up and standing at the foot of the bed, resting his forearms on the footboard and getting a blatant, unapologetic eyeful.

Robin sits up on her elbows, crosses her legs at the knee, and smirks at his pout. "I'll tell you later," she says.

"You get off the phone, grinning, I feel like I deserve to know what about," he retorts.

"What's the surprise?" Robin asks, raising her eyebrows.

"Or we could just have more sex," he amends, snapping his fingers as the idea strikes.

"Wait," she says, sitting up to put her phone on the nightstand, as he starts to come around to the bed. He stops where he is, his look questioning, and sits down carefully at the edge of the bed. She sits up, too, and wonders if this is — this is what? The right time? The right conversation to have while naked? She's not even sure what she's planning to say. She's thinking of the phone, work, and Lily — _all these surprises and sexual favors and trips to Spain, it actually sounds pretty great._

"Are you…" Robin asks, but she can't finish the sentence, can't ask anything _,_ because what he answers no? He's not acting as though he thinks they're not doing fine. He doesn't act like he's noticed anything at all. And sure, he pulled away this afternoon, but he's been fine, he's been great, they've had sex twice since then, so maybe she's the problem. Maybe it's all in her head. It's always been in her head, and it's not fair to… to…

"Is something wrong?" he asks, openly concerned, and his eyes flick over to her phone.

"Did you like Spain?" she asks him, a small question she can handle.

"Dude, Spain was awesome!" he enthuses, inching towards her.

"Venezuela? Russia?" she asks. He hadn't gone with her to Morocco because of the upcoming AltruCell trial; he had also missed her week in Athens for the same reason. "Nuuk? Vietnam?"

"Greenland _sucked_ ," he complains. "They barely even have _cable_. Worst hotel ever." He looks at with understanding, and the smile fades from his face. "Did your job call?" he asks.

"Do you like … this?" she asks, gesturing around the bedroom.

"I like _this_ ," he says, gesturing at her, and she chuckles because he's so transparently pervy.

"I'm serious," she says.

"Me too," he says, shamelessly eying her. She kicks at him, and he cackles, catching her ankle. He gives her another look, like he's trying to figure her out. She's not sure what conclusion he reaches. "I love you," he says.

And that's what matters. Not what they talk about, not what they don't need to talk about, not Lily or Tracy or any of their friends. They're in Vermont and they're naked and he loves her and he's planning a surprise, something big and possibly weird and none of the other things, none of her stupid, obviously unrequited fears, none of it matters at all. He loves her. They love each other.

They're fine.

 _It actually sounds pretty great_ , she thinks again, and takes a deep breath. "I have a surprise for you," she says, smiling.


	9. Museum of Flight

**Newfane, Vermont**

 **Friday, February 5th**

 **2016**

* * *

 _don't let go,_

 _i need you to hang around._

* * *

The house isn't exactly to Barney's tastes. A tiny two story colonial with white clapboard and black shutters, it lacked the open floor plan, sweeping views, and metal-and-chrome aesthetic he'd always preferred. The wood floors creaked, the walls were a generic off-white, the fireplace was permanently black from centuries — literally centuries! — of soot. There was an actual lawn and an actual backyard that ran into woods; woods with a _brook_. Not the kind of backyard Barney grew up with, ratty grass backing into a chain link fence and busy avenue. The windows stick when he tries to open them. The furnace rattles and hums noisily, blowing warm air through vents in the floor.

And the town! He'd always heard how rustic Vermont was, he'd thought the nearby town they're staying in was bad, but the _town_! Two roads, a bank, a café, a post office, church, and an honest-to-God general store. There isn't even cell service! Just a couple of dozen colonial houses, an old courthouse, and gently rolling mountains, piney and covered in snow. It was quaint. It was charming. It was, to a man who had never lived more than twenty miles from Manhattan, kind of terrifying.

"Eeuugh," he can't help but whimper, and the realtor looks over at him questioningly. He straightens his shoulders and his tie. "It's beautiful," he says, recovering smoothly. "I'll take it. How soon can you draw up the lease?"

They talk money and contracts for a few minutes. It isn't too weird, Barney isn't a lawyer but knows his way around a legal agreement (or illegal, as it happened), and afterwards, he slips outside for a smoke, leaning against the side of his rental car, his scarf pulled up around his neck and snow crunching under his feet. A man actually says _good afternoon_ as he walks by. No one else is around; not a single car passes on the street. It's _weird._ It's _unnatural._

It's exactly the kind of adorable rustic shit Robin loves.

The first time he saw it, two weeks ago, Barney knew it'd be perfect. Ted had just called and mentioned he was taking Tracy up to Vermont for the weekend, and Lily had called ten minutes later to tell him it was officially a group thing. One quick internet search later, crosslegged on the hotel bed, Barney had been looking at pictures of striking fall foliage. Another search had disclosed houses for sale, and… well, it was like everything had slid into place.

He'd buy her a house! Sitting there, in a hotel in Madrid, it had seemed like the most obvious thing on the planet. A house, a cute as hell house, with a backyard and trees and all that crap. They've been joking about Vermont for years. It's perfect. She's going to love it.

With any luck, by the time May rolls around, he'll have the lease finalised and payments arranged, and all he'll have to do is present her the key. If this vacation home didn't make for the most spectacular third wedding anniversary present of all time, then Barney would love to see what _she_ was coming up with.

He should probably start heading back soon, but… But. He has time for one more cigarette, he decides, lighting up and taking a few steps down the street to warm himself up. Ends up taking a walk to the corner and back. All the picture-perfect houses with their dark shutters and window bars. A few still have Christmas lights in the eaves.

As he walks, he tries to figure out what the problem is. The contract is fine. The house itself is a steal. The last few months have been rough, but — no. He shakes that thought away. That's not the problem. There's not a problem at all, actually. But his mind keeps drifting back to the bed and breakfast, the slack in her expression, the way he could tell she was thinking… something. But it feels like every guess he'd had was wrong. She'd wanted sex, she hadn't wanted sex. They'd joked, she'd gotten mad. It's been like that a lot, lately, he has to admit.

Ever since… but that's the past. They're starting to get used to the realities of her new work schedule, and… anyway, things are settling down. They're only going to get better and better. Look: after years of joking about it, he's taken her to Vermont! Look: he bought her a _house_.

But…

He finds himself frowning at the adorable 19th century courthouse in the town square, as white as the untouched snow surrounding it. Robin has been… worried, a lot, lately. And she won't tell him what she's worried about. He hasn't asked. He has the feeling, low in his gut, that he might know. He thinks of her eyes going wide when he'd told her he had to go. _But you'll love it_ , he'd wanted to say then; wants to say now, wants to pick up the phone and call her, tell her about it, how much she'll love it: _I bought you a house_. I bought _us_ a house. That's what makes it okay. She's a little annoyed now, but as soon as she finds out what's going on — he bought a _house_ , he bought them a _house_ — she'll be over the moon. Just like always, like every surprise. It's going to be great. It's going to erase all these weird worries, stutters, problems.

Yeah, it's going to be perfect. No: awesome. It's going to be _awesome_. It is awesome already.

He imagines them here in the summer. Dogs running around on the lawn. They can get a rabbit hutch! They'll have no cell service… but also no work. No upcoming trials, no last-second assignments, no AltruCell, no WWN, no carry-on luggage… no stress… no weird moments… nothing but each other.

It's going to be legendary.

* * *

 **Brattleboro, Vermont**

 **Friday, February 5th**

 **2016**

* * *

Later, he's in the cozy, adorable, super weird bathroom of the bed and breakfast, the sink running hot as he rinses his arms and torso. He's talking over the running water to Robin in the other room, feeling a bit sleepy and boneless ( _heh)_ and ready to flop back down onto the bed with her. It's been on the tip of his tongue all evening, _I bought us a house_!, but he's managed to keep it quiet, if only because he keeps imagining her face when she finds out. He'll blindfold her and drive her up here! No, he'll hide the key where she'll find it, and when she asks, he'll…

"What are you daydreaming about in there?" Robin asks, and he turns off the sink. Hears the bed creak slightly as Robin shifts her position. It's been doing a lot of that, what up. Any niggling feelings of worry, of things not being quite right, had vanished the moment they'd left dinner. No more weird talks, weird looks, thinking about talking and then not talking because what if it makes bad stuff happen… _sex_ , that's the solution to all life's problems. Not that they have problems. They have the opposite of problems.

 _I bought you a house_! he thinks for about the eighty-third time. "Hey, did you get me a Valentine's Day present yet?" he asks instead, mostly just thinking of presents. "I wanted the Rotonde de Cartier —"

"Yeah, I'm not buying you a forty thousand dollar watch for Valentine's Day," Robin interrupts, a little laugh in her voice.

"Why not?" he whines. _I bought us a house, it's freaking cute, you're going to love it_ , he thinks, putting his towel back on the rack. Three months and nineteen days until he's officially the best husband in the universe. She'll be so happy. No one will doubt him after this.

"Isn't the true spirit of Valentine's Day supposed to be romance, not presents?"

"If you buy it for me," he says dreamily, checking his hair in the mirror, "I'll do all _sorts_ of stuff to you. _Dirty_ stuff."

"Yeah, you do that anyway, idiot," Robin says fondly as her phone begins to ring, and his heart unclenches just a little bit. He's doing a great job. She's relaxed and happy and he bought her a house. He kind of wants her to ask if he bought _her_ any presents, so he can say _surprise! I bought a house!_ , except no, the house is supposed to be for their anniversary. Crap, he needs to come up with a different present in the next week. Debating this, he meanders out of the bathroom and into the bedroom, his toes sinking into the soft carpet surrounding the bed. He means to flop down onto it, but Robin's kind of spread out, and he ends up at the foot of the bed, enjoying the view, while she finishes up her phone conversation.

All things have to do is stay exactly like this. Their anniversary is in three months, and the AltruCell hearings should get underway this fall. Things will even out. He'll keep proving he can be there for her, that he won't run away from her, that he _can_ be a good husband and _can_ make her happy, buy her presents and do dirty stuff and follow her wherever she goes. And bit by bit, Robin will be happy all the time. And… okay. And she won't look at him with that slack expression anymore, and they'll joke around, and then, there'll be no "then." She'll look like she does now all the time. Relaxed, happy… naked.

And he won't have this feeling anymore. That any second, she's going to look at him, and realise he's the reason she's like this, and…

No.

They'll be in their new house. Together. May 26th, 2016.

She asks him if he's happy, and his eyes flick down to her chest, to her eyes, blue and cautious and he doesn't hesitate: for the first time since Barney married Robin, he tells his first conscious lie, skirts the truth and changes the subject. Tells her he loves her and asks about her surprise.

She grins and scoots herself into more of a sitting position, and he has a fun couple of seconds watching various bouncy parts as she does.

"WWN is doing a long series on public sector corruption — which, okay, is pretty boring, but it's a two month project in a foreign land," she says a little dramatically. "Guess who they asked to be the lead?"

"Dude, seriously?" He's excited, first and foremost. It's one thing to be a correspondent, do the reports, work with producers — it's another to lead a investigative special, get to help influence the tone and story, pick interviews and spend the time really covering, shedding light on, the issue. He feels guilty — another one for the list — that she had to take a step down in her career because of him. But this is awesome. Really awesome. And hey, he has a kind of nostalgic interest in public sector corruption, so that'll be neat.

But then he thinks: two _months_? "Starting when?" He can't help but frown a little.

"We'll fly out on the 21st," she says, smiling, "You in, Stinson?" Okay — they'd be back the beginning of May. That's fine. That's enough time. He can take care of the legal stuff over the computer; get Marshall to help with the documentation. They can Skype. Two months. He hopes he's just imagining the look in her eyes, that she's looking at him carefully. Like he'll say no. Like she thinks he thinks — but that just makes his head hurt, and everything's basically awesome.

" _Yeah_ ," he says, allowing himself to get excited now, too, pushing everything else away in favor of what is clearly the important part: "This is going to be awesome! So where is this corrupted den of vice and sin we're about to take over by sex-storm?" _Please say Vegas, please say Vegas._

"Buenos Aries," says Robin, laughing, and he loves that she does, that she still laughs, smiles at him, that things are going to be fine. Things are back on track again, he thinks, the path opening up before them. A week in the city, two months tearing it up in some exotic locale, their anniversary and the most adorable backwoods summer home of all time. This is going to be the best year ever. "Argentina isn't going to know what hit it."

* * *

 _i'm so broke,_

 _and foolishly in love._


	10. Author's Note

_so, hi!_

 _thanks so much for sticking with me to the end! this story was the first thing i ever wrote for this fandom, and it was … well, i wrote a finale-compliant b/r death spiral and didn't tell anyone that's what i was doing._

 _so, um, you know, sorry about that._

 _when i decided to make this into a real 'story,' my goal was to see if i could try to write a story like this in a way that was at least vaguely ic; that i could come up with a better reason for a breakup than 'wifi.' it wasn't at all easy! the chapters kept ending with b/r in better places than in my outline — for example, they were most definitely_ not _meant to resolve their argument in_ 'the races' _— and, well, i felt like i was tricking my readers by doing this in the first place."i never said it_ _ **wasn't**_ _finale-compliant!' is kind of a jackass excuse. sorry._

 _i do hope that, if you made it to the point where you're reading this in the first place, you enjoyed this story as it was, or at least didn't hate it outright! even if you did hate it and didn't enjoy it, thanks for giving it a shot. :)_

 _i want to give a quick thanks to my readers and especially reviewers and_ _ **especially**_ _idiotpurple for being freaking cute and a stalker; bikelock28 for giving lovely reviews and guessing where my story was going i think before anyone else, causing me much amusement; beneaththeumbrella for joking around with me (and helping me procrastinate by giving me great one-shot ideas!); and especially snowboundmermaid for putting up with literal weeks of me going GAAHHHH DEATH SPIRAL (exact quote) and ranting about the plot and B/R hugging things out and allowing me to spoil the entire plot for her and generally tolerating my various panic attacks about this mess._

 _oh —_

as _thanks for tolerating my word vomit here and my story until here, i do have one last thing…_

* * *

 **White Plains, New York**

 **2030**

* * *

 _It's strange, kids, and it's sad, but that's the way life happens. Things don't always turn out the way you'd hoped. Sometimes, no matter how much you try, things just… fall apart. Back in 2016, Barney and Robin learned that the hard way, but ultimately also learned that —_

"Wait," says Penny, frowning, sitting forward on the couch.

"Yeah, dad," says Luke, his arms crossed. "That's not how it happened."

 _Yes, it was. I was there, remember?_

"You said you and Mom went to Farhampton to celebrate when she got her doctorate, not Vermont," Penny says.

 _No, that was our anniversary. Or was it for her doctorate? I know we went to Vermont… was it for Christmas? Oh, you know what, we_ did _go to Farhampton when your mother got her doctorate. We were in Vermont for_ Valentine's _day._

"Wait, so you're saying everyone tagged along on you and mom's romantic Valentine's day getaway? Because that's kind of weird," Luke says, making a face.

" _Way_ more importantly, no one ever mentioned a tragic miscarriage leading to Uncle Barney and Aunt Robin breaking up before now," Penny says, raising her eyebrows.

 _Well…_

 _I guess it's time. You kids are old enough. The truth is, I haven't been completely honest about all of the details. Your Aunt Robin never had a miscarriage. In fact…_

* * *

 **Brattleboro, Vermont**

 **Friday, February 6th,**

 **2016.**

* * *

"…I know!" Tracy says excitedly. "I've never been to Vermont before! I know it's too early in the season for sugaring, but can we hit up a supermarket and act like we got it from a tree?"

"You know it!" Lily says, freeing one hand to high five Tracy.

"Psh, Vermont maple syrup," Robin mutters, shaking her head, turning her attention back to the others. She loosens her scarf, stretching as best she can, and runs a hand over her round stomach. Honestly — almost nine months pregnant and in the middle of nowhere. If she goes into labour here, she's going to kill Barney…

* * *

 **Lenox Hill Hospital, Manhattan.**

 **Wednesday, August 19th,**

 **2015.**

* * *

…Dr Simonds steers them over to the plasticy sofa. Barney sits heavily on it. It creaks. Ted leans against the hospital bed, his arms crossed, fingers tapping on his elbows. "Your wife has had a minor placental abruption," the doctor says. "The placenta began to detach from the uterine wall, which likely began last night or this morning. Luckily, we caught it in time. Your wife lost some blood, and we'll be monitoring her very closely, but both she and the baby should be just fine…"

* * *

 **Upper East Side, Manhattan.**

 **Monday, August 17th.**

* * *

"…Are we … doing this?" he asks, knowing she can't respond while gargling. "Going all in?" She looks at him out of the corner of her eyes, and he isn't sure what it means. The bathroom feels like the wrong place to continue all their declarations, but he goes for it: "Because I want to. I think I want to. Because we have this chance in front of us, and I think we'd be awesome at it."

She spits into the sink again and lowers the toilet lid to sit on it. "Barney…"

"You can't ask me what I want and then shoot it down like, half a second later," he says quickly, raising his eyebrows.

"I know," she says. "And I'm not." Robin sighs. "I guess… if it's like you said…"

He tries not to let himself feel hopeful, or at least not show it on his face; he nods.

"Then sure," Robin says. "We're having a baby. We have to tell the others…!"

* * *

 **Upper East Side, Manhattan.**

 **Monday, August 17th.**

* * *

"…Okay," he says, and reaches out, brushes his hand along her cheekbone and kisses her softly. He still tastes like artificial blue raspberry. He draws back again, squares his shoulders. "Okay, here's the play. We have the kid." Her heart catches. He spreads his hands out before them, painting the scene. "We leave our jobs. You go on bedrest, except, we take off. Five weeks in Bejing. Next five, Spain. Four star hotels all the way. First class plane tickets. Ooh, we can get a boat. I bet the Captain has a couple spare boats! Weeks ten through fifteen, we go live in Amsterdam! And then after thirty odd weeks of travelling and staying all bed in day — not just because you're knocked up, what up, you pop out a baby with your eyes and my bone structure…" He pauses dramatically; she doesn't dare move or blink; "…And then we give him to Ted."

* * *

 **White Plains, New York**

 **2030**

* * *

 _And that, Luke, is absolutely, one hundred percent true, story of how your mother and I… adopted_ you _._

" **WHAT?"**

* * *

 **White Plains, New York**

 **2030**

* * *

 _…Okay, I'm just kidding. Kind of._

"That wasn't funny!" Penny scolds.

 _It was pretty funny._

"Dad! Stop messing around!" Penny says, as Luke hides his face in his hands. "Aunt Robin never had _any_ kids! And the story still doesn't add up!"

 _What do you mean?_

"Well, for one thing, Uncle Barney and Aunt Robin are _married_ ," Penny says with clearly waning patience.

"And what about Johnny Lawrence?" Luke adds, recovering.

"And that picture Aunt Lily has, of Uncle Barney in the sweater?"

"That tabloid article Aunt Robin has framed in her office?"

"I definitely remember going to visit them in Washington when I was little," Luke says pensively.

"Me too," Penny agrees. "Not to mention the small fact that we all went up to their vacation home for Aunt Robin's birthday _last month_ ," she points out. "How does _that_ track with the tragic divorce thing?"

 _Well, okay. Maybe there's a_ little _more to this story. But you guys must be sick of hearing your old man talk, so why don't we take a break and see what your mother is —_

" **DAD!"**

 _Okay, okay. Heh, I knew you kids would start appreciating my stories soon or later. Let's see…_

 _It was the fall of 2016…_

* * *

 **to be continued.**


End file.
